We now have less than a year to get ready to relocate to Costa Rica. So, we have finally started taking an inventory of everything we own to decide what we will take with us when we move to Costa Rica.
John found a great set of database programs which will help us compile lists of everything and determine the values for Costa Rica's custom officials. So far, I have used the Book Organizer, Music Organizer and Movie Organizer to download info on our collections. The program lets you enter the UPC barcode and then it retrieves all the information, including titles, authors, artists, actors, release dates, value, etc. It has already saved me hours of data input.
All electronics and appliances have to be listed with the brand model and serial number. This way Customs knows when they were manufactured and if they are used or fairly new. Anything less than 6 months old will be considered new and taxed accordingly. The average tax rate on new appliances and electronics is somewhere around 50%. We will probably go ahead and replace a number of our old electronics and appliances in the next few months, so we can take them into Costa Rica as "used" goods, and hopefully we will be taxed at a lower rate.
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