Cancun Airport Passengers Get Fined for Carrying Multiple Electronic Devices

Cancun International Airport is the busiest airport in Mexico, serving more than 13 million passengers annually.
Mexican customs regulations only allow the import of one portable computer per person arriving from abroad, including laptops and tablets.
Travelers who bring more than one device will be required to pay a tax of up to 19% of the device’s estimated value up to $4,000.

Florida resident Tammy Levent never imagined that she could face a fine of about $200 for clearing customs at Cancun International Airport in June with both her laptop and iPad as part of a business trip.

A travel entrepreneur, Levent is no stranger to Cancun. For the past decade, she has been visiting the city two to three times a year for work, often taking aspiring travel agents on training trips.

When Levent arrived at the airport this time, she had two checked bags and one carry-on. As she went through customs, she was stopped at a table where an agent checked her luggage. The agent pulled out her iPad and laptop, telling her, “You can’t have both,” she told USA TODAY. She said she always brought those devices with her, and this was the first time it had been a problem.

As the gateway to Mexico’s most visited city, Cancun International Airport is also the country’s busiest, handling more than 13 million passengers annually and 500 flights daily.

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Unlike the United States, where there is no limit on the number of laptops you can bring with you, many passengers may not know that Mexican customs regulations only allow one laptop computer per international arrival, including laptops and tablets. Otherwise, travelers must pay a tax of up to 19% of the device’s presumed value up to $4,000, according to the country’s General Foreign Trade Rules, as part of their baggage and passenger allowance.

Levent said her older iPad was considered worth much more to the agent than it actually was, which made her fine higher than she thought was fair. “It was wrong,” she said of the experience.

“At the end of the day, you want tourism, but you scare people away,” Levent said. “You have huge companies like pharmaceutical companies … (attracting groups) and they come with laptops and iPads.”

Why are travelers being fined for having multiple electronic devices at Cancun airport?

The law is not new. Travelers from abroad can bring “portable computer equipment known as a laptop, notebook, omnibook or similar,” according to a list from Mexican customs. If passengers do not pay a 19% fine for the additional portable computers, they will be confiscated.

“It’s actually been around for a long, long time,” Michael Boguslavskiy, a travel agent with Caballeros Vacations who specializes in Cancun tours, told USA TODAY. “It’s a very outdated list right now, but it’s still there.” (For example, you can only bring 10 DVDs if people still have them.)

However, as Riviera Maya News reports, there has recently been an increase in the number of customs officers actually enforcing the law and collecting fees from tourists.

“It was never rigorously enforced, but now they are enforcing it worse than ever before,” Bogusławski said.

Customs officials in Cancun did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

Boguslavskiy said some possible reasons could be the increase in passengers bringing multiple devices with the intention of selling them. “Of course, it’s not the case for 99% of people who bring a laptop and an iPad, but it’s up to customs officials how they decide to view that,” he said. Or it could simply be an increase in tax revenue from the influx of visitors.

According to Boguslavski, that’s not the only way Mexican customs can seem like an illusion to travelers. Only two cameras are allowed tax-free, and technically, cigarettes over 10 packs can be fined or confiscated. Because there’s a duty-free store right before customs, people stock up on cheap tobacco, thinking “it’s safe,” only to have their purchase confiscated shortly after, he said.

Upset by her experience at the Cancun airport, Levent sent letters of complaint to Mexican officials. In a response letter from the Customs Administration in Cancun, Levent learned that baggage checks were carried out randomly.

Boguslavskiy sends a customs list to all of his clients traveling to Mexico and advises any traveler traveling abroad to “stay up to date with local customs regulations.”