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Hello expatslu,

Just checking in to see if you have had a chance to look into buying online in Panama. Were you able to find out whether ID is required or if taxes apply for sites like Amazon or Etsy?

Hopefully, someone can assist this time.

Cheers,

Cheryl

´ó¿§¸£ÀûÓ°Ôº team

I don’t have the foggiest idea. I do know that there are Amazon stores there that you can have things shipped to. I would think that they would collect any taxes or fees upon pickup. I have always bought local and if I needed something ordered, I would have someone else order it for me. If you look around and ask the locals, there’s not much you cannot get locally or at least in Panama or David.

I've ordered from Amazon with delivery to Panama. When you add a Panamanian address, you are required to provide your passport number for customs payments. I keep my shipments under $100 to avoid import duty. One thing I've noticed - some items show up as free shipping and the cart shows 0 in the shipping fees. On other items with free shipping, when you go to the cart, you see a charge for shipping and then a "discount" for the full shipping amount. When this happens, the subtotal of your items plus the shipping amount must be less than $100 to avoid import fees. I'm not sure why it works that way since the shipping fee isn't actually charged.

We just ordered some items from Wayfair that are being shipped in via Box Shop's maritime shipping. It will be interesting to see how the import fees are handled on these items over $100.