realjd

I'm flying home from LHR soon and am playing on bringing alcohol quantities over the 1L duty free limit (3x750mL beer + 1L scotch). Before I had GE, I declared it on the landing card and was never charged duty. Now that I have GE, I want to be sure to follow the rules. I've only used GE a few times since I got it and don't recall a question on alcohol. Is there a generic "I have goods to declare" question? I can't remember specifics about what was asked at the kiosk.

I figure worst case I get a receipt without an X and insist I talk to a CBP agent anyway.

usafwso

If I were you, I would just go through the standard customs & immigrations lanes, declare your liquor overage, pay duty and be on your way. Don't risk your GE/NEXUS card by making one tiny mistake.

Ari

Silly advice. Use the Global Entry lane, not the standard lanes, and declare to a person. There is no need to wait in the standard lanes, despite your inclination.

dj506

Just did this a couple of months ago coming back from Australia with 2 cases of wine. On the GE kiosk, there is no specific question about liquor; however, I was told to answer Yes to the question that asks if I am bringing back more goods than allowed by my exemption.

I got the receipt with the X, went to the CBP agent as the next in line, declared my wine. He stamped my receipt and off I went. No problems.

realjd

To follow up, I said yes to the second question (about exceeding duty free limits), got an X, and declared the alcohol to the officer. No duty was charged and it added all of 90 seconds to the process.

As an aside, DTW immigration was great. It's much nicer than ATL, JFK, SJU, and others I've been through. They even had a dedicated customs line for GE, something I haven't seen before. When I was waiting for my bags, the ag beagle came up and poked his nose into my wife's bag. I told the handler that there was candy in the bag and she said "If that's candy then we have a problem". I told her I declared it and she replied "No, not you and me, me and the dog!"

cparekh

I would go through the GE line.

In the US, Immigration and Customs are two separate processes. GE qualifies you to pass through Immigration via the GE line, then you may enter the customs process and declare your items.

SEA1K4EVR

There is no question on the paper form or at the GE kiosk specifically about alcohol. You don't even need to choose an option at the kiosk that will get you an X unless the value of the alcohol is going to put you over your $ value exemption for goods. Getting the X means you have to see a passport officer..just skip that and go to the customs line and you can declare it there if you want.

If you're not bringing back cases of booze or very expensive booze.. they're not even going to waste their time collecting duty of a few $ per bottle.

Majuki

This is incorrect. You're exceeding the duty free exemption for important of alcohol. It's based on volume in addition to the dollar limit exemption. You therefore should answer yes to the question about exceeding the duty free exemption at the GE kiosk.

As others have said, you'll get the X, and a CBP officer at passport control will stamp the form and direct you to the duty counter if they decide to collect the import duty.

SNA_Flyer

My experience was a bit different. I declared at the kisok (case of wine), got the X, and the officer stamped and wrote something on my card. Customs guy looked at it puzzled, asked what I had, scratched his head, and said sorry, I had to to to Agriculture! The immigration guy thought I needed to go there for some reason. I go over to agriculture, they ask what I had, they scratched their head, mumbled something about the immigration guy not knowing what he was doing, stamped my card and I was out of there.

Anyhow, nobody wanted to ding me for extra duty - which they rarely ever do for this amount of overage.

It was the proper procedure, but the immigration guy got it all wrong.

thegrailer

My last experience with an X'd card at IAD left me never wanting to see one again. And it was a simple error at the kiosk rather than me wanting to declare something. 30+ minutes later, I cleared immigration after no one could figure out why I needed to see them in the other room. In light of that, please bear with me as I try to reconstruct what I am supposed to do when I want to bring a lot of booze in. [at IAD for example]

1. At the kiosk, make sure that I check that I am exceeding the duty free limit and get my X'd card
2. Walk to baggage claim and find my hard shell full of booze [yea for me!]
3. Show my X'd card to customs agent on the way out and explain that I am declaring said booze.
4. Hopefully get an ok and walk on out. Alternatively, get sent to pay duty and then walk out.

Is that about it?

Cheers -

squeakr

my experience is that CBP Almost always refers you to Ag if you get an X. even if you've explained the X.

nrr

Don't you still have to be cleared by a passport control agent before step 2 (above)?

thegrailer

I don't recall being stopped there? At IAD it's card, bags and then customs. At least back in Feb it was

realjd

At least at DTW, they had a sign saying if you had no X you could walk past the immigration booth; if you had an X you had to stop and talk to the guy. IIRC, ATL has a similar sign.

I told the immigration officer that I got the X because I had to declare excess alcohol. He asked how much, said he wasn't going to bother with duty, stamped my receipt, and welcomed me home.

After getting my bags, I passed through customs. He also asked about the X, I explained why, and he waved me through. I was never sent to ag, presumably because I got the X for answering "Yes" to the duty free limits question and not for a random secondary.

nrr

I once got an "X" at JFK (T8, AA). When I went to the first available pp agent, he looked at his computer screen and escorted me to a "special room"--there was one person ahead of me, and after about 5 minutes I was cleared. I asked why I had gotten the (dreaded) "X", the agent thought it was fingerprint related. I have not gotten an "X" on any of my 5 other intl. flights since then.
[I did get a followup email from GE, asking me to describe my incident.]