Argh! Lucia you might be asked by the customs to declare that the leather is not of any endangered species. It's funny though because the BBags are made in Italy! I had to do so with a Botkier ordered from Adasa Hawaii (made in Italy: what a loop, huh?).
For all the USsies out there: I really do not know how does it work from your side, but I can tell you my experience: I purchase a lot from the US mainly on Ebay. Good tricks to prevent customs duties are:
1) Declare a low value. We have a no-tax zone under 45Euro of value, but sometimes (a lot) at the customs they count as part of the value also the postal charges. And they calculate VAT and import duties on the total sum!!
If you insure the whole value, beware that you might need to pay import duties, even if the package is declared as a gift.
2) Send it with airmail instead of using couriers or express mail. The customs thing is made randomly (not every package is scrutinized) and if it's an anonymous brown packet (not too big though) it might be able to pass unnoticed.
3) Declare it as a gift. Even in this case, you might end up paying import duties, a different thing from VAT. A gift is not charged with VAT but unfortunately import duties are another story.
4) Declare it as used! In that case, as it has no commercial value (for them! HA!), in many cases they will not calculate any fee on it.
5) If possible, always declare that it's plastic or faux-leather or whatever! Otherwise you might be asked to fill papers to ensure they are not some kind of protected leather (like python for California, if I recall correctly). In any case, better to omit the information. Just state "used bag" if not asked to specify "leather". This way you are not lieing
What is really really really annoying is that the whole customs stuff is applied randomly. I have noticed a pattern in the Italian customs: they tend to stop bulky packages more than small packets. I always have this feeling that they are having a sadistic fun in making people pay the duties! No really, sometimes they have called me like if I was caught guilty of something: "There is a packet here for you lady. You need to pay 160 Euros of duties on it" and i have this feeling that they are evilly grinning at the other side of the telephone!!
Last year I was in Singapore and they literally rampaged through my suitcases searching for HUGE LUXURY ELECTRONIC ITEMS because they could not believe that I had been in S'pore without buying a laptop or so! How annoying! In the end they found the crappy, 20S$ worth watercooling system for the PC my DH bought at a street market and the police officer made this face like "TA-DAAAH! Here you are! Miserable tourist tryin to import ILLEGALLY a VERY EXPENSIVE whatever-this-is to Italy!" So we were like: "Yeah, that's a watercooling system for the PC, worth a couple of bucks". The look on the face of the guy was priceless! He could not figure out what the heck it was. So he ran around the whole terminal trying to get some officer to say that we had to pay something on it and only after 20 minutes he gave up and had to let us go...
Ok ladies sorry for the long story but I HAVE A BAD RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMS!!!
