Customs Declaration Form on Arrival?

[Lauren and Babak 0]

Hi all,

My fiance will be traveling to the US next month on a K-1 visa. I have a question about the Customs Declaration Form and was wondering if anyone had any advice. I understand that he does not need to declare anything for "personal use" (clothes, household items, etc.) but that he does need to declare gifts. He will be bringing a couple of pieces of jewelry for me as well as some gifts for my family. Does he need to declare the full value of all of those? Also, does he need to complete the portion for residents or visitors? If he declares as a visitor, he must pay a tax on anything over $100. Has anyone had to do that? Where/who do you even pay?

Thanks in advance for any info!

Take care,

Lauren

[ChuckM 8]

When my wife came, she had many gifts for me and my family. She declared some as personal items, others she noted in the declaration. She has purchased and brought our wedding rings in Iran, and wore hers, mine was in her carry on with so much other jewelry, she had no problems with any of this. The only thing the customs people had an issue with was the pistachios she had. She marked that she had no seeds since they are nuts. They disagrees and said she should have marked this as seeds. When I traveled with her to Iran earlier this year, we brought back a lot of wedding gifts that fer family gave to use when were were there, these we also marked a personal items since we considered them ours. We had no issues.

One thing I did, was give her a sample of the declaration form so she knew what to expect when she saw it on the plane. She just had to copy it to the form and she was set.