Shipping personal effects to Tbilisi

My wife and I went thru some very high charges on taxes imposed on shipping her personal stuff here.  I have made several trips back and forth from the US moving our personal stuff over, so it was way better to pay an extra $160 per bag /42KG max with the airline rather than paying $250 to ship there for around 18kg.  I would bring 4 large luggage bags at a time.  When you ship,  i learned the hard way to disclose $10 value and not the real value of clothes, misc used stuff. They wanted to tax me on the insured value. One thing that caught us off guard is when we shipped my wife's salon tools such as scissors, hair dryers, etc.  We shipped to her mother's name since we were coming in a few weeks later.  They said if we had shipped to my wife's name, it would have not been taxed so much. We paid around 250 gel tax for that stuff. I can see why you can not really buy any good quality stuff here. No one can afford to buy, ship, pay taxes and then sell it for any profit.   hope that helps

Does anyone know if I drive my personal effects across the border, do they charge me VAT and customs fees? To pay 30% VAT means it would be cheaper to sell everything before moving and purchase again when I get there. Seems steep for personal effects. I have tried searching for official information on moving (driving) our personal effects into Georgia. We also went to the Georgian Embassy here and they were not helpful at all. She basically said, they will let you know at the border if there is a fee.

Does anyone else have experience with moving your personal effects to Georgia?

Thanks for the information. I guess we will discover what they will charge when the time comes and just be ready for whatever happens! And that helps me with making the decision to keep it to a minimum and not bring too much!

Cheers!

Good information!
tnks