By Crossave · Updated: August 2026
The price on the product page is not what the parcel costs you. Between the checkout and your door sit two separate charges — customs duty and VAT/GST — and each country switches them on at a different value. Below the threshold a purchase can be genuinely cheap; one euro above it, the same purchase can cost 25% more. These are the seven sets of rules Crossave actually calculates, written out so you can check our numbers yourself.
Two things decide everything: where the goods physically ship FROM, and which country they are going TO. Not where the shop’s website is registered — a .com selling from Osaka is an import, a German warehouse shipping to France is not. This is why Crossave shows a 'Ships from' column on every result, and why it says 'n/d' rather than guessing when the source doesn’t state it.
One cost is missing from every calculation on this page, and from ours: the courier’s customs clearance fee. DHL, UPS and FedEx charge roughly 15–30 EUR per parcel to file the paperwork. It is not a tax, it varies too much to predict, and it is charged on top of everything below.
Since 1 July 2026 the EU charges a flat 3 EUR duty on non-EU shipments worth up to 150 EUR. This replaced the old duty exemption, and it is a bridge measure that runs until July 2028. Above 150 EUR you pay a percentage duty that depends on the goods, plus import VAT at your own country’s rate — 22% in Italy, 19% in Germany, 21% in Spain and the Netherlands, 20% in France and Austria, up to 27% in Hungary.
Import VAT is due from the first euro; there has been no VAT exemption on imports since July 2021. What changes is who collects it: when you buy through a marketplace like eBay or Amazon and the goods are under 150 EUR, the marketplace charges the VAT at checkout under the IOSS scheme. If your total already shows VAT included, you do not pay it again at delivery.
Buying from another EU country is not an import: no duty, no border VAT, nothing to declare. The VAT is already inside the price you see.
Up to 135 GBP there is no duty, and the 20% VAT is normally charged by the seller at checkout rather than collected at the border. Above 135 GBP the model flips: percentage duty by product type, plus import VAT collected on delivery. Books are VAT-free in the UK at any value.
Watch for double payment around this threshold. If the price you saw already included UK VAT, you should not be asked for it again — and if you are, that is worth challenging before you pay the courier.
This threshold is scheduled to be removed by March 2029, announced in the November 2025 budget.
Switzerland abolished industrial customs duties on 1 January 2024, covering essentially all consumer goods. So there is no duty — but import VAT still applies at 8.1% (2.6% on books).
The only relief is a collection threshold, not an exemption: if the VAT owed comes to 5 CHF or less, it is not collected. That works out at roughly 62 CHF of goods at the standard rate. Above that, you pay from the first franc — the threshold does not act as an allowance.
This is the rule that has changed most, and the one people are most likely to remember wrongly. The 800 USD de minimis exemption was suspended on 29 August 2025 and made permanent by a Customs and Border Protection regulation on 24 June 2026. Every commercial shipment now pays duty regardless of value.
Actual rates vary a great deal by country of origin and by channel (postal versus courier), far more than in the other regimes on this page — treat any estimate for the US, including ours, as a floor rather than a figure. There is no federal VAT; state sales tax is a separate matter and is not part of the customs calculation.
Up to 1,000 AUD there is no duty and nothing is collected at the border. The 10% GST on low-value imports is charged by the seller at checkout, the same model the UK uses. Above 1,000 AUD you pay percentage duty plus GST on the way in.
As with the UK: if the price already includes GST, you should not pay it twice.
Canada’s general de minimis is 20 CAD, which in practice means almost everything is taxable. Above it you pay percentage duty plus 5% federal GST.
Two caveats worth knowing. Provincial taxes (PST/HST) vary by province and are not included in our estimate, so your real bill can be higher. And goods shipped from the USA or Mexico fall under CUSMA, which has much higher thresholds — 40 CAD for taxes and 150 CAD for duty by courier.
Below 10,000 JPY a shipment is exempt from both duty and consumption tax. Above it you pay percentage duty plus 10% consumption tax.
The exemption does not cover leather goods, alcohol or tobacco, which are taxable at any value. The threshold itself is expected to be removed by 2028 as part of Japan’s e-commerce reform.
Crossave does not calculate duty for destinations outside these seven, and it says so on the result instead of quietly showing a zero. A missing rule shown as 'not available' costs you a search; a missing rule shown as '0.00' costs you money at the door.
If you are importing into one of those countries, the totals you see are price plus shipping only. Check your own customs authority before you buy — some regimes, such as Brazil and India, tax essentially everything with no threshold at all.
Every rule above has a threshold, and thresholds are where estimates go wrong. Three checks catch almost every mistake:
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