\u201cWhew!\u201d I thought, as I watched all my stuff finally get
\nunpacked, after transporting it home along with my two cars. After our odyssey
\ngetting our stuff past Nicaraguan Customs into Nicaragua (and thousands of
\ndollars later) I was finally home free and ready to get to work! The first
\nthing to do was order some equipment for our company, get it incorporated in Nicaragua,
\nand open a business bank account. In the USA, all this can be done online
\npretty easily, and with the ordering of electronic equipment (we needed some IP
\nequipment for our Internet-based company) generally one can expect to have
\ntheir own purchased property delivered with reasonable certainty.<\/p>\n
Mind you, there\u2019s nothing wrong with the services of UPS,
\nFedEx, or the freight and mail forwarding companies in Nicaragua. They do the
\nbest they can, under the circumstances. But the circumstances are pretty
\ndifficult to deal with. Here I was again, dealing with Nicaraguan customs and
\ntheir \u201csticky\u201d hands.<\/p>\n
To make a long story short, every time something had to come
\nthrough customs, it was guaranteed that the duties on it would be arbitrary,
\nincrease the cost of the item by at least 50%, and it was anyone\u2019s guess
\nwhether we would receive it at all. One example was that we ordered a couple of
\nunblocked iPhone 4\u2019s from so that we could insert the SIM card from the
\nNicaraguan phone company into them (the ones from AT&T can\u2019t be used with a
\ndifferent SIM card unless you unblock them, and the iPhone 4 at the time was
\nstill too new \u2013 no software was yet available to do this.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, we got a great deal on the iPhones, had them I hope that by now, you\u2019re really grasping the importance of In Nicaragua, customs is so notorious that the newspapers I\u2019ve been picking on Customs to highlight the importance of The constant delays, plus the realization that the So we were coming back to the USA. Logically, leaving should Stay tuned for more\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhew!\u201d I thought, as I watched all my stuff finally get unpacked, after transporting it home along with my two cars. After our odyssey getting our stuff past Nicaraguan Customs into Nicaragua (and thousands of dollars later) I was finally … Continue reading
\nshipped, and they were promptly stopped by Nicaraguan customs, who, after
\nholding them \u201cin inspection\u201d for almost a month, said that the cost on our
\ninvoice was \u201cwrong.\u201d They asked us to provide, as proof of the cost, an
\noriginal invoice notarized and authenticated by the Nicaraguan consulate in the
\ncountry of origin within 10 days.<\/em>
\nWHAT????!!! Explain to me how I was going to contact the vendor in Canada<\/em> and tell them that the e-mail
\ninvoice was not good enough and that they had to go to a notary with an
\ninvoice, get it to the Nicaraguan consulate in Canada, and mail it to me in
\nNicaragua\u2026within 10 days?? Obviously this was a ploy by customs to get more
\nduties (if they could claim a higher cost, then they would get more taxes.) I
\nfinally just told them to put whatever cost they thought should be on the
\ninvoice, and tax me based on that. It was either that or let them auction my
\nphones. We ended up paying over $300 in taxes on each iPhone, with no recourse
\nfor disputing the legality of the situation.<\/p>\n
\nour Constitutional Amendments that deal with property. It is exactly these
\nrights that prevent the government in the USA from doing to you what other
\ncountries are allowed to do with impunity. Property rights are the bread and
\nbutter of our society, and without them the prosperity of the United States
\ncould never have been possible.\u00a0 (If you
\nwant to know more about what I\u2019m talking about, Google the term \u201cBoston Tea
\nParty\u201d)<\/p>\n
\ncover its shenanigans on almost a constant basis.\u00a0 I almost laughed myself silly one morning when
\nthe national newspaper ran this title as the lead story on the daily edition \u2013
\n\u201cThe rule of law holds no sway at Customs!!\u201d The goal of the Nicarguan Customs officials
\nis to either make as much money off of you as possible in taxes, or else keep
\nyour stuff to get auctioned to people that are on the inside.\u00a0 And don\u2019t think that money or those items go
\nanywhere but to line the pockets of key officials. Guaranteed. Cars, iPads,
\nfood, wine, phones, TV equipment, books, games, golf clubs, rock
\ncollections(!), and satellite dishes are just a few items that I\u2019ve heard
\nhorror stories about from friends trying to make it work in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n
\nproperty rights, but let\u2019s pick on another entity \u2013 the Nicaraguan equivalent
\nof the Secretary of State in a particular US state \u2013 the entities that register
\nand incorporate new companies. Don\u2019t even ask me to tell you what they are, the
\nprocess is so convoluted I couldn\u2019t begin to explain it, and at least 3 different
\ndepartments are involved. When we arrived in November, the first thing we did
\nwas to hire an attorney to help us incorporate our Internet-based employment company.
\nWe paid the \u201cexpedited\u201d fee (over $2000) to get it done, presumably, in 30 days
\nor less. Keep in mind that I can open a company in Nevada for less than $500
\nand have it be ready in a week or less. Or to compare to another Latin American
\ncountry, I can pay $1000 in Panama and open it in one day. Nicaragua is a prime
\nexample of what happens when bureaucrats are in charge and not held
\naccountable. By the end of January, we STILL didn\u2019t have a company. Of course,
\nno bank would let us open an account without our incorporation papers, so you
\ncan imagine how easy setting up to do business became.<\/p>\n
\ngovernment was never going to make things easy for us, plus the additional
\nrealization that should our electronic equipment, unavailable in Nicaragua,
\never need to be replaced, all our business operations would stop while we waited
\nfor Customs to release it, led us to the final decision to incorporate and
\noperate elsewhere. After all, an Internet business can be operated from
\nanywhere, and without the energy project to keep us in Nicaragua, there was no
\nreason for us to stay.<\/p>\n
\nhave been easy, right? Just pack our stuff and go? By now you realize where the
\nstory is going.<\/p>\n