Moving from Canada to the US: Form 3299, the one-year rule, and what the truck costs

Who qualifies for free entry

The year is counted on the item.

Free entry is a year of use, not a stamp in a passport. Used household and personal effects that you owned and used abroad for at least twelve months can enter duty-free under HTSUS 9804.00.05. Returning residents and non-residents who are settling both sit on that tariff line when the goods are personal, used, and not for resale. The year is counted on the item. A sofa you have lived with since a previous lease and a lamp you bought on the way out are not the same declaration. If the lamp is under a year, it is dutiable and it has to be listed on its own line, with its own value.

Goods that miss the year, or were never used, stay outside the exemption. Items still in the box, stock you plan to sell, and purchases from the last few months do not qualify under HTSUS 9804.00.05 no matter how carefully they are packed with the old furniture. Work the twelve-week international checklist before the crew arrives so a recent buy is not buried in a carton of kitchenware. The move from the US back to Canada is a different form and a different agency, and this paperwork does not travel in reverse. Keep the two lanes in separate folders.

Inventory before the truck loads

Sixty cartons marked miscellaneous is an invitation to an exam.

Write the inventory the way a packer writes a list. CBP treats the itemised inventory as the detail behind your declaration: every carton numbered, contents named, values in one currency, room by room. Start it before the truck loads, not in the parking lot of the crossing. The inventory calculator is a plain way to get carton counts and room lists onto one page you can actually sign. If you want a volume check before you ask for a quote, the cubic metre calculator tells you how much truck you are buying. Volume is not a customs form, but a vague cube and a vague list tend to travel together.

Sixty cartons marked miscellaneous is an invitation to an exam. Officers are not offended by old towels. They are stalled by labels that say nothing. Name the contents, put a value on the carton, and keep the currency consistent so the packing list and CBP Form 3299 tell the same story. Reviews that describe a long exam usually describe this kind of list, written by the shipper and then blamed on the border. A careful list will not make the truck invisible. It gives the officer a reason to wave it through.

Form 3299 and the ACE filing

An officer with a question and no answer holds the load.

You sign CBP Form 3299, and the carrier files the manifest. The Declaration for Free Entry of Unaccompanied Articles, revised May 2024, is how you claim the one-year exemption when the goods do not travel with you. You file it with the inventory. The mover, or its broker, files the ACE manifest in CBP's system before the truck reaches the crossing. Those are different filings. The manifest says a truck is coming. The declaration says the goods are yours and that they qualify. Ask which broker files, and ask when, before the load date moves.

The truck usually waits on a scan, not on the officer. The desk reads these reviews every week. The recurring story is a driver at the crossing while someone in another province searches a phone for a passport photo. An officer with a question and no answer holds the load. Keep the phone on, and keep scans of your passport, status document, lease or offer letter, and the bill of lading where you can send them without a treasure hunt. If you cross in person with bags, that booth paper is CBP Form 6059B, and it does not stand in for Form 3299 on the unaccompanied shipment.

An exam is a delay you can sometimes see coming. The reviews that lose a week rarely describe a random pull. They describe a list nobody could read, a broker nobody could name, or a shipper who went silent. Ask the carrier who files ACE and get the broker's name in writing. On the Canadian side, check how a mover's credentials read before you treat a customs promise as a service. The mover can stand at the window. The officer is still waiting on you.

What stays duty-free and what does not

A car does not belong on CBP Form 3299.

Duty-free covers used household goods that already lived with you. Furniture, clothes, kitchenware, and the ordinary contents of a home qualify under HTSUS 9804.00.05 when you owned and used them abroad for at least one year. Anything newer is dutiable and must be listed separately, with a value, so it is not folded into the exemption by sitting in the same van. This page does not publish duty rates, because the rate depends on the item and a made-up number would be a fiction. If a thing is new, say so on the inventory and let the entry be calculated from that line.

Vehicles, plants, soil, and alcohol do not ride along as furniture. A car is a separate DOT and EPA import. A car does not belong on CBP Form 3299. Plants and soil need USDA paper, and alcohol is its own import rather than a carton of household goods. Run questionable items through the prohibited items checker before you pack them for a move into the US. Uncollected shipments are the other way a duty-free load becomes expensive. After 15 days with nobody collecting, the goods go to a general order warehouse, storage fees run from day one, and the shipment can be sold after six months.

What a mover can and cannot do

The exam that costs a week is not bad luck.

The mover drives, lists the cartons, and files the manifest. A competent cross-border carrier numbers cartons, hands you a packing list, and puts the ACE filing in motion through a broker. That is real work, and it is not your declaration. CBP Form 3299 is signed by you. No van line owns your year of use, and none of them can swear to it. Read Canadian mover reviews. Cross-border reviews in that file number 239, customs comes up in 49 of them, and the rating on the set is 3.10. Check the carrier in the license lookup before you send a deposit. Work that stays inside the US, under long-distance moving, does not include a customs signature.

The exam that costs a week is not bad luck. It is sixty cartons marked miscellaneous, and the reviews that describe it wrote the labels themselves. The notes do not need a villain at the port. Where the list named the contents, people wrote about waiting, fuel, and stairs. Where the list said miscellaneous, they wrote about a week. A mover who prints those labels and calls it standard is handing you the delay. You can still refuse the wording before the doors close and the truck is no longer yours to correct.

Haulest is not a carrier. We read the reviews and the forms. We do not book the truck, and we do not file your entry. If a salesperson says the company handles customs, ask which person signs CBP Form 3299 and which broker files the ACE manifest. The first answer should be you. The second should be a name, and a time before the truck reaches the crossing. If both answers are a slogan, you still own the declaration when the officer calls.

What it costs

Treat the median as a file figure, not a quote.

Reviewers typed a median of $5,270 for this lane. The licensed file holds 148 of those reviews as of 21 Sept 2026, and 81 of them are dated since 2022. Each price is the whole move as the reviewer typed it. The sample is self-reported, and it skews toward long-distance jobs and toward people with something to say. Treat the median as a file figure, not a quote. September 2026 rate cards on single-mover pages put a 2 to 3 bedroom Canada to US move at $3,000 to $9,000+. Those cards are their asking range. They are not a number from this desk.

The reverse lane sits nearby, and a domestic US move is a different market. Reviewers coming from the US back to Canada reported a median of $5,000 across 91 reviews. A priced US interstate move in 2025 sat at a median of $4,500 on the US moving cost page. On the way into the US, the extra usually shows up as broker and border time, a truck that waits, and access on either end. EIA diesel was $5.60 for the week of 31 Aug 2026. That explains a fuel line. It does not build your quote. Read how to read a moving estimate before you treat three PDFs as the same job. Origin context sits on the Canada hub.

Restricted items and the vehicle

Form 3299 will not carry the car.

A vehicle is a separate import, on its own paper. DOT HS-7 and EPA 3520-1 are the vehicle forms, and they do not collapse into the household entry. Title, conformity, and emissions stay with the car. Do not bury a vehicle in the household list and hope the port sorts it out on the day the furniture arrives. Form 3299 will not carry the car. Let the household truck clear on the inventory and the declaration, and keep the vehicle in its own queue with the owner who is actually importing it.

Plants, soil, and alcohol do not pass as used furniture. Plants and soil need USDA paper, and a planter full of soil is a poor surprise at a warehouse dock. Alcohol is entered as alcohol, not as a used pan, and this page will not invent a rate or a bottle allowance. Pull anything you cannot explain as household goods and settle it before packing day. Then watch the shipment you do send. Collect it within 15 days, because a general order warehouse bills storage from day one and can sell uncollected goods after six months.