Scam or not?

[empirex]

Who actually benefits from something as ridiculous as this?

Precisely. If they are that worried about taxes, it should be based on Rand amount not the frikken amount of packages.
What if you place 7 orders worth 15 pounds each in a year. Not like it's a fortune :rolleyes;

 

[noxibox]

Goods are normally cheaper to import than to buy here locally. As an example, a friend of mine upgraded his iMac's RAM recently. They wanted to charge him R3 or R3.5k for this here. He got the RAM from overseas, including shipping, for R600.

Who is 'They', because standard RAM can be bought cheaply at any computer shop. Thankfully though Apple has now solved this problem by making it nearly impossible, and definitely warranty-voiding to upgrade the RAM in an iMac yourself. Maybe they're in league with South African customs or 'They'.

A few years ago, and apparently a lot of people does this, another work friend of mine sent his wife to Hong Kong with 2 empty suitcases. She bought a crap load of designer clothes for cheap, came back, and resold them. This covered her stay AND return flight costs including a profit.

If she had been searched she would have had to pay the duties and probably a penalty. However importing by post or courier would still be subject to going through customs regardless of any limit on number of personal imports or requirement for commercial importers to register. And while using customs duties to protect local industries is a possibly questionable practice it's certainly not unique to South Africa.

Now ask WHY they put this in place again.... then think of the reasons I just stated. It should make perfect sense why they don't want to allow anyone to succeed in their own business in South Africa.

Neither of which is particularly relevant. Nor is this 'they' trying to stop anyone from succeeding in their own business. On the contrary we could say that your examples demonstrate the opposite. The truth of course is that customs is not stopping you from importing or even really putting any real impediment in your way.

I import quite a bit and the reason is exactly that - even with courier costs I can land items to my door for cheaper than buying it locally. There is no way I'm paying R270 for that "PREMIUM" hdmi cable! I can get a stock standard one for about R20 overseas. Even with VAT R25.08 (R20 x 1.10 x 1.14) and clearance fees (+R15) it lands at my door for the grand total of R25.08 + R15 = R40.08

R40 vs R270 ... they make the choice so easy.

I have bought cheap high quality HDMI cables locally. It wasn't even worth importing them myself. There are overpriced so-called premium ones on sale overseas too though.

Who actually benefits from something as ridiculous as this?

No-one really. It could just be a legacy rule that no-one has bothered to change. Not like it has any impact on the majority of the population and, although in reality it's not a rule customs typically enforce anyway, anyone who wants to import more often without the risk of hassles can just register (it's very simple to do). I've seen similar requirements in other countries for commercial importers to register.

 

[noxibox]

Precisely. If they are that worried about taxes, it should be based on Rand amount not the frikken amount of packages.
What if you place 7 orders worth 15 pounds each in a year. Not like it's a fortune :rolleyes;

All that would happen then is like the gift allowance they'd set the Rand amount and then not look at it again for years resulting in it also becoming silly. It's arbitrary whichever way they do it. And it's not a high priority to keep on top of it. In the case of the gift limit it is only a tiny, tiny proportion of the population who are impacted. And in the case of the threshold set for what they consider being a commercial importer it has no real deleterious impact on the individual importing. Registering is easy.