Dominican customs, trip by trip, for a Secret Garden owner

Customs meets an owner here in three sizes. There is a form completed on a phone before every flight, a luggage allowance on every arrival and, for the few who ship, a formal import at a port. Each Secret Garden residence arrives with its stove, oven, extractor fan and air conditioning already installed, so the bulkiest things a new home needs never cross a border in your name. This guide takes the three in that order and marks the point where a licensed customs broker, not a web page, should take over.

The e-ticket: one form in each direction, on every trip

The Dominican Republic retired its paper arrival card, customs declaration and traveller health affidavit in favour of a single electronic form, the e-ticket, filed through the migration authority's portal at eticket.migracion.gob.do. The government's own announcement of the form calls it compulsory for travellers of every nationality, in both directions, and free. A website that wants money to "process" it is not the official one.

The form has a migration part, a customs part and a public-health part. Customs is where you say what you are carrying: currency, quantities and anything that would be taxed. Submitting it produces a QR code that can be saved as a PDF or kept on a phone. The Ministry of Tourism's published answers say the airline checks it at the counter before you fly and Customs asks for it when you land.

Two details catch owners out. Arrival and departure are separate forms, so a round trip produces 2 QR codes, and each new trip is a new application rather than a renewal of the last one. And one person can register a household on a single form, up to 7 travellers in total; children appear in the migration and health parts, while only adults complete the customs section.

1. Before the airport
   Complete the arrival form online and keep the QR code on your phone or as a printed PDF; the airline asks for it at check-in.
2. Declare in the customs part
   List currency, food and anything beyond your personal allowance here. The customs section is for adults only.
3. Show it on landing
   Customs reads the same QR code at Punta Cana International Airport, a 15-minute drive from the community.
4. File again to leave
   Departure needs its own form and its own code. Nothing carries over from the arrival.

What the residence already holds, and what that leaves you to bring

Every one of Secret Garden's 327 residences is handed over turnkey, with four appliances installed: a stove, an oven, an extractor fan and air conditioning. Those are the heavy, wired-in pieces a household would otherwise have to buy, freight and clear, and they are already fitted when you take the keys, with delivery scheduled for mid-2027. Furniture is a separate choice. The site publishes an optional furnishing package for owners who want the home rental-ready from the first day.

That leaves three ways to fill the rooms, and only one of them is your customs problem. A sofa bought from a Dominican retailer is the retailer's import, not yours, and the optional package works the same way from your side. Only goods you send from abroad yourself become an importation under your name — and that is where the rest of this page applies.

So the honest comparison is not a shipped sofa against a local one. It is the price of the object against ocean freight, a broker's fee, duty assessed on the goods plus their freight and insurance, and the time a finished apartment stands empty while a crate is inspected.

The allowance that travels in your luggage

Most of what an owner carries never needs declaring. The customs authority's traveller manual lets clothing, shoes, toiletries, make-up, books and magazines through untouched, and electronics in the permitted quantities with them: 1 laptop and 1 tablet per person, new or used, free of tax. A second laptop is taxed — worth knowing for anyone who plans to work remotely from Bávaro with a personal machine and an employer's one.

Sports kit is treated generously because it is personal. Golf clubs, a surfboard, diving gear or a bicycle, new or used, enter as personal luggage when they are for your own recreation, and camping gear or a kayak may even follow as unaccompanied baggage. With Bávaro Beach a 5-minute walk from the gate, that is not an abstract point. The limit is quantity: a reasonable amount for the activity, never enough to look like stock.

Food is the item most often forgotten. The manual says it has to be declared on the form, because plants, farm produce, foods and medicines answer to the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Public Health as well as to Customs. Personal medicines are allowed; anything controlled or psychotropic should travel with the prescription that justifies it.

Unaccompanied baggage: the middle route for a bigger move

Between a suitcase and a container sits a category owners rarely hear about. The traveller manual describes unaccompanied baggage as luggage that does not fly with you but moves as air cargo, and it attaches conditions worth reading before you book it. It may contain only articles for the passenger's own use. It must be covered by a document identifying you, with a packing list in English and in Spanish. It may travel only between the airports on your own ticket, and your ticket number, flight, airline and date have to appear on the air waybill. Clearance is personal: you, or an agent acting for you, handle the customs dispatch and every document.

For someone landing at Punta Cana International Airport, 12.2 miles from Secret Garden, that makes it a practical way to send the boxes of a life — linen, books, the kitchen things you are attached to — without booking sea freight. What it is not is a way to furnish a home. "Personal use" is the boundary, and the officer at the airport, not the freight company, decides where it falls.

Shipping a household, and the exemption written for residents

A container of furniture is a formal importation. Duty is worked out on the value of the goods plus insurance and freight, at one of the five tariff bands in Ley 146-00 — 0%, 3%, 8%, 14% or 20% — and ITBIS at 18% is collected with it. Which band a given object falls into depends on its tariff heading, so this page names no rate for any particular item. The customs authority's SIGARD portal offers a tax-liquidation simulator that works without an account, and a licensed broker can classify your packing list before anything sails. Neither estimate is the final bill; the authority's own liquidation is.

A duty exemption for household effects does exist, and its key is residency. Article 13 of Ley 146-00 covers the personal and household effects of foreigners who come to live in the country for good, and the authority's published requirements ask for a residence permit already granted. Buying at Secret Garden is a property purchase, not a residence permit, so on its own it opens nothing here. The benefit can be granted to a person only once, it is written against tariff duty, and whether it also reaches ITBIS is a point to have your broker confirm in writing before you rely on it.

Online shopping once you live here runs on a separate lane. Courier parcels worth US$200 or less, measured on the goods alone without freight, come in free of import taxes. First, though, the buyer must be enrolled in the Registro Único Aduanero, identified by passport or cédula; parcels for someone not enrolled are held until they are. And splitting one order into several parcels to stay under the line is presumed when similar goods reach the same person within 30 days or less.

What stays out, or needs a second ministry

The traveller manual's list of banned or restricted goods is short: drugs, psychotropic substances, firearms, polluting substances and anything else that threatens national security. That is a summary for travellers rather than a complete legal schedule, so absence from it is not permission. Most of what trips people up is not banned at all but regulated by another body. Animals are an example: for assistance animals the manual points to the Ministry of Agriculture and names vaccination and animal-health certificates, and a pet flying with you falls under that same ministry, whose current requirements are the ones to check before booking.

Cars are the restriction that most often upsets a moving plan. Under Ley 04-07 a used vehicle more than 5 years past its manufacture cannot be imported, with the vehicle year counted from 1 July to 30 June, and a salvage vehicle cannot come in at any age. Cash is not taxed, but more than US$10,000 in any currency, or in bearer instruments, must be declared on the way in and on the way out, with papers showing where the money came from.

None of this replaces advice on a real shipment. For anything larger than a suitcase, the person to ask is a licensed Dominican customs broker, who can classify the goods, quote the charges and tell you what the rules require on the day you actually ship.

Common questions

Do I need an e-ticket every time I fly to Secret Garden?

Yes. The form is compulsory and free for every traveller, and it is filed once for arrival and once for departure, so each round trip produces 2 QR codes. A household can travel on one form, up to 7 people. Keep the code on your phone: the airline asks for it at check-in and Customs reads it when you land at Punta Cana, 15 minutes from the community.

Does buying a residence let me import my furniture duty free?

No. The household-effects exemption in Article 13 of Ley 146-00 follows a residence permit that has already been granted, not a property title, and it can be granted only once. Because each of the 327 residences already comes with a stove, oven, extractor fan and air conditioning installed, and furnishing is offered as an optional package, many owners find there is little left worth shipping.

What should I pack rather than ship?

Personal things: clothes, linen, books, a laptop and a tablet, sports gear for your own use and, if you like, gifts up to US$500 once every 3 months. For a larger personal load, unaccompanied baggage flies as air cargo between the airports on your ticket, with a packing list in English and Spanish, and you clear it yourself. Declare any food on the e-ticket.

Can I bring my car to the Dominican Republic?

Only if it is a used vehicle no more than 5 years past its manufacture under Ley 04-07, counted by a vehicle year running from 1 July to 30 June, and never a salvage vehicle. Even then it is a formal importation with duty and ITBIS, so have a licensed customs broker price it before you decide.