What do I need to detune my board?

Need help buying a diving board for some poor Estonian kids

• Need help with some of the details of buying a diving board for some poor Estonian kids A close Belarussian friend of mine wants to buy a $12-13k diving board for a community center in Estonia. The European distributor wants several thousand dollars more for the board than American distributors, but the American distributor cannot ship to Europe due to territory constraints. So here's our brilliant little scheme: She will wire me the money. I will purchase the board, have it shipped to me in the US, then ship it to Estonia myself. But we're getting a little bogged down in the details. (FWIW, we both know and trust each other, so no worries of somebody getting scammed.) My question: Since she'll be transferring over $10k to me, would this incur any tax liability (would the IRS see this as a "gift" to me?) or be illegal in any way? I do remember a special form I had to use to report >$10k transfers to the US govt for intra-country transfers, but I've never done this internationally -- let alone to or from an ex-Soviet state (Belarus), if that makes a difference. Since my friend will be initiating the transfer, will she need to similarly report this?

• Answer:

  The European distributor wants several thousand dollars more for the board than American distributors, but the American distributor cannot ship to Europe due to territory constraints. I suspect that once you take into account the cost of shipping this to Estonia, the costs may be so close as to be not worth the effort, time and delay. I would work this backwards and find out both the shipping cost and the import tax on this plan and re-calculate.