Tell me about shipping gifts from Canada to the US

Post date: 2020-12-04 04:41:15

Due to everything, I'll be staying in Canada for Christmas while my parents and siblings celebrate together in the US. Naturally I'll need to ship gifts from here to there, but I'm having trouble finding answers to my specific questions online.

You'd think I'd know the answers to some of these questions after living here for over 4 years, but international parcel mail remains somewhat of a mystery to me.

Specific questions:

Will I have to worry about owing customs fees on either end? Is there a max dollar value per item or per package below which I don't have to pay fees? I expect all the individual items I'm shipping are worth less than ~$50 or so.

Can I ship wrapped gifts? I know the general advice is "don't ship wrapped gifts internationally" but I can't find anything specifically about Canada to the US. I don't really mind if the gift ends up getting unwrapped by customs, but I don't want the package to get returned to me.

How the heck do I fill out the customs declaration? I usually overthink it, but I honestly am not really sure what level of detail to go into. Can I just write "gifts - $20" and call it done?

Ideally I would ship via Canada Post but I'm willing to use a private carrier if it will make life easier. I'll also try to get as many items as possible shipped directly from the seller to my family, but there's some personal/specialized items I'll need to mail myself.

Personal anecdotes welcome. Links to official guidelines also welcome if you're better at google than I am.

I am also interested in the answers to these questions in the US -> Canada direction so that I can advise my family.

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