Maybe a little perspective here from someone who has been a frequent cross-border shopper for a good twenty years.......?
Back in the day (my, don't I sound like an old fogey!), there was duty on just about everything -- it was actually quite complicated. But the free trade agreement was slowly but surely responsible for bringing those duties down each year, then finally eliminating most of them. Every January 1st my girlfriend and I would eagerly search out how some of the duties had gone down -- we were (and still are) diehard cross-border shoppers.
Duty was assigned based on a tremendous number of categories. For example, if we went to a craft store and bought fabric, fabric paint, and sewing machine needles, it was possible that there would be a different duty rate on all the items. It was then up to the customs guard to decide if they wanted to break down the bill and itemize the duty on everything, or just assign one category to the entire bill and charge the duty (and the tax) accordingly. I remember one evening, after stocking up at JoAnn's after a great sale on fabric paint, trying to help the customs agent determine what duty category puffy fabric paint belonged in.
Oh, and it changed if it was specifically designated "Christmas" too -- Christmas had its own special duty category!
Another specific I do remember is that groceries had no tax, but had 12% duty -- so if we had a bill from Tops or Wegmans that was, say, around a hundred bucks, we knew we would be dinged with a $12 duty charge for our food.
Back then, in the early 90s, if you said you had spent
anything, you were just about always pulled over to the Customs office -- and you had to wait in your car until a customs guard came out, and came up to the driver's window to talk to you. And they just about always wanted to look in the car and trunk too. At that point, sometimes they just told you 'thanks' and let you drive away, other times it was 'go inside and produce your bills'.
But as the 90s went by and the duty charges got smaller and smaller and were finally all but eliminated, the revenue to be gained by pulling over returning Canadians grew smaller and smaller, until now when it's really just the tax. So, as the years have gone by, we have found that while once we were just about always pulled over, now we are hardly ever pulled over.
This is not only because of the elimination of duties. The Canadian dollar plays a big part in this. As the Canadian dollar grew weaker and weaker, many folks stopped going across the border, or did it less frequently. Even my frequent trips (going at least twice a month) dwindled down to only going a few times a year.
But now -- the dollar is strong again, stronger than it was back then. The parking lots in the shopping malls are once again full of Canadian license plates. And once again the Canadian government can earn some extra revenue on all those bargain-hungry shoppers out there!
As far as being pulled over, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we are not aware of -- they do run collection blitzes sometimes, where the plan for the next few hours are to pull over just about everyone and collect as much $ as possible. Back in July my girlfriend and I were pulled over and they had stopped so many that there wasn't even a place to park! We had to park strangely, sideways, then go in and show our bills, then line up to pay. I had to pay a whopping grand total of seven bucks! If it hadn't been the obvious blitz on, I'm sure they would have just told me to go back to the car -- but everyone was paying, no matter how small.
And this leads me to my one pet peeve -- I
SO wish the Canadian government would let our customs agents behave more like BORDER GUARDS and not as REVENUE COLLECTORS! This so bugs me. I wish the agents' duties were so much more focused on
protecting our country -- checking the IDs of those entering Canada, for example -- than on finding out how much $ we spent. We hardly ever get asked for ID or anything similar, but we always get asked about our shopping. Wrong priorities!!!!
Okay, off that soapbox now.......
and fun day. The four of us ) DH, ME, DD 15 & DD18) spent around $50-$80 each, nothing new. Well today, they made us pay duty
it was only $32.00. He said that we are allowed NOTHING.Oh well, now to start saving for our yearly weekend trip late November.
because i heard you can get them for under 50 cents a pound 
Then he told me to be on my way, and i did not have to pay. 
