Import Duty & Customs Calculator
The parcel, its duty rate, and what you carried home
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning indicator only. It does not assess every part of a household's finances or replace individualized professional advice.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter what you paid the seller for the goods, then the shipping and insurance they charged as a separate box. The split matters: the United States appraises imports on transaction value, so duty is charged on the goods figure alone and the freight sits outside it.
- 02
Look your item up at hts.usitc.gov and enter its base duty rate, then the tariff stacked on top by country of origin — Section 301 duties have run at 10% to 12.5% since 24 July 2026. Both fields open at zero because no honest calculator can guess a Harmonized Tariff Schedule line for you.
- 03
Add the carrier's brokerage or disbursement fee — UPS, FedEx and DHL all charge one, and it is company pricing rather than a government charge. If your carrier also takes a percentage of the duty it advances on your behalf, there is an advanced field for that.
- 04
If you are asking about a trip rather than a parcel, leave the shipment boxes at zero and use the baggage box instead: the value of goods you carried home yourself. That is a completely separate rule and the page answers it on its own branch.
- 05
Leave the statutory block alone unless something has changed since this page was written. It carries the FY2026 merchandise processing figures, the $2,500 informal-entry threshold, the $800 traveller exemption with its $1,000 flat-rate band at 3%, and the shipment de minimis allowance at $0 — which is the live figure, not a blank field.
Formula
Dutiable value = what you paid for the goods. Shipping and insurance are outside it, because the US appraises on transaction value rather than on delivered value. Duty = goods × base HTS rate. Tariff = goods × the Section 301 rate for the country of origin. The two stack. Merchandise processing fee = a flat $2.69 if the goods plus shipping come to $2,500 or less (an informal entry), otherwise 0.3464% of the goods value bounded between $33.58 and $651.50 (a formal entry). Brokerage = the carrier's stated fee + its percentage of the duty it advanced. Landed cost = goods + shipping + duty + tariff + processing fee + brokerage. The de minimis allowance is $0, so nothing zeroes any of this out. Carried home instead: duty = 0 on the first $800, then 3% of the next $1,000, then your HTS rate on everything above that. From Guam, the USVI or American Samoa the exemption is $1,600. On a same-day or repeat trip the exemption is $200 and crossing it makes the WHOLE value dutiable at your HTS rate — a cliff, not a band.
Example
A $400 pair of boots from an overseas seller, $35 of shipping, a 6.5% HTS rate and a 10% Section 301 tariff, brought in by FedEx at its $17.50 advancement fee. Duty is 6.5% of $400 = $26 and the tariff is 10% of $400 = $40 — both on the goods alone, never on the $35 of freight. The entry is $435 all in, which is under the $2,500 informal threshold, so the processing fee is the flat $2.69 rather than the $33.58 floor a formal entry would carry. Add the $17.50 of brokerage and $86 sits on top of the price of the goods: a 21.5% uplift, and a total landed cost of $521. Before 29 August 2025 that same parcel was under the old $800 de minimis threshold and arrived with nothing to pay whatsoever. Carry $1,500 of goods home in your own baggage from the same trip and the arithmetic is different again: $800 is exempt, the next $700 is flat-rated at 3% for $21 of duty, and you would owe nothing at all coming back from Guam, where the exemption is $1,600. Come home the same day, though, and the $200 tier applies — the whole $1,500 becomes dutiable at 6.5%, which is $98.
Definitions
- De minimis (Section 321)
- The $800-a-day duty-free entry for low-value shipments under 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C). Suspended for all countries on 29 August 2025 and repealed in statute from 1 July 2027. Its field on this page ships at $0 because that is the live figure.
- Personal exemption
- A separate rule, 19 C.F.R. part 148 subpart D, for goods a returning traveller carries in accompanied baggage. $800 general, $1,600 from Guam, the USVI or American Samoa, $200 on a same-day or repeat trip. Unchanged and in force.
- Transaction value
- The price actually paid or payable for imported merchandise — the basis on which the US appraises duty. International freight and insurance generally sit outside it, which is why this page does not charge duty on your shipping.
- Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS)
- The line-by-line schedule of US import duty rates, published at hts.usitc.gov. Classification turns on material, construction and origin; rates run from Free to over 30%.
- Merchandise processing fee
- A user fee charged on entries. FY2026: a flat $2.69 on an automated informal entry, or 0.3464% of the goods value between $33.58 and $651.50 on a formal one. Re-indexed each 1 October.
- Brokerage or disbursement fee
- The carrier's own charge for filing the customs entry and fronting the duty. Not a government charge, not set by any statute, and frequently larger than the duty on a small parcel.
Good to know
Two rules, one number, and only one of them survives
There are two unrelated $800 figures in United States customs law and almost every argument about import duty online is really two people talking about different ones. The first is the de minimis exemption under 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C), often called Section 321: up to $800 of goods per person per day could enter the country free of duty as a shipment. That is the rule every Shein, Temu, AliExpress and eBay-from-abroad parcel rode in on, and for a decade it made buying a $40 item from overseas indistinguishable from buying it down the road. It is gone. The President suspended it for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025 by Executive Order 14256, then for every country in the world on 29 August 2025 by Executive Order 14324. CBP wrote the suspension into the regulations with two interim final rules on 24 June 2026, and the underlying statutory allowance is repealed outright from 1 July 2027 by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. There is no threshold left and no phase-in: a $12 phone case is charged on the same basis as a $1,200 lens. The second $800 is the personal exemption for a returning traveller, at 19 C.F.R. part 148 subpart D and chapter 98 of the tariff schedule, covering goods you carry home in your own accompanied baggage. Nothing has happened to it. It is worth being blunt about why the distinction matters so much: collapse the two into a single figure, as a great many calculators still do, and the page tells a traveller who bought $700 of souvenirs that they owe duty when they owe nothing, and tells a shopper buying a $150 item online that it enters free when it will arrive with a bill attached. The discriminator is not the amount and not the country. It is whether the goods were shipped to you or carried by you.
What is dutiable, and where the rate comes from
Two things decide the duty: what the goods are appraised at, and which line of the tariff schedule they fall on. The United States appraises on transaction value — the price actually paid or payable for the merchandise — which means international freight and insurance generally sit outside the dutiable amount. That is worth stating plainly because almost every other developed country does the opposite: the CIF convention used across the European Union, the United Kingdom and most VAT jurisdictions charges on the delivered value, freight included. So a calculator written for London will quote you a higher figure than you owe in Cleveland, and it is the single most common error in an imported-parcel tool. The shipping is still money leaving your account, which is why this page adds it to the landed cost. It simply is not taxed. The rate is harder, and the honest answer is that nobody can tell you what it is without the product in front of them. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule sets duty line by line, and classification turns on material, construction, function and origin — a cotton shirt and a polyester one are different lines with different rates, and general column 1 rates run from Free to over 30%. The official schedule is published at hts.usitc.gov and it is the only place worth looking. On top of whatever that line says sits a second layer that has moved four times in eighteen months. The IEEPA tariffs were held unlawful by the Supreme Court in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump on 20 February 2026 and terminated four days later. A 10% Section 122 balance-of-payments surcharge ran from 24 February to its statutory expiry on 24 July 2026. USTR replaced it the same day with Section 301 duties of 10% to 12.5% on products of roughly sixty economies, covering over 99% of US imports, and that is the regime live today — under appeal, and worth re-checking before you rely on any figure entered here.
The charges that are not the duty
On a small parcel the duty is frequently not the biggest number on the bill. Two other charges attach, and they behave completely differently from each other. The merchandise processing fee is a federal user fee and it comes in two shapes depending on how the entry clears. At or below the $2,500 informal threshold — which for mail merchandise is governed by the postal informal entry process that took effect on 24 July 2026 — the fee is a flat $2.69. Above it the entry becomes formal and the fee is 0.3464% of the goods value, floored at $33.58 and capped at $651.50. On small formal entries only the floor is doing any work: the percentage does not reach $33.58 until about $9,694 of goods, so everything below that pays the same. All of these are federal fiscal year figures, effective 1 October 2025 and re-indexing on 1 October 2026, which is part-way through the calendar year and easy to miss. The other charge is not a government charge at all. Carrier brokerage — UPS calls it a disbursement fee, FedEx an advancement fee, DHL a processing fee — is what the courier bills you for preparing the entry and for fronting the duty to the government before you have paid it. UPS takes 3.5% of what it advances with a $14 minimum plus roughly $10 to $20 of entry preparation on small shipments; FedEx raised its charge on 20 July 2026 to the greater of $17.50 or 2.5%. None of it is set by statute and none of it moves for a regulatory reason. It moves when the carrier decides. The reason this matters more than it used to is arithmetic: the de minimis suspension pushed every low-value parcel into a real entry, so brokerage now attaches to shipments that used to clear untouched, and on a cheap order it is routinely larger than the duty and the tariff put together. One thing you will not find on this page is import VAT, because the United States does not charge any. If a calculator adds 20% on top of your duty it was written for another country. Your own state's use tax may still reach the purchase, but that is assessed by the state, not collected at the border.
Coming home with it in your own bag
The traveller's side of the page runs on a different rule and the page computes all three of its tiers on every render, because which one applies is a fact about your trip rather than something a calculator can infer. The general exemption is $800 of goods, available if you have been outside the country at least 48 hours and have not claimed the exemption in the previous 30 days. Above it, the next $1,000 is charged at a flat 3% rather than at your item's own rate, which is a genuine simplification in your favour; above that band the goods are classified and appraised individually, and this page uses whatever duty rate you entered as a stand-in for the real classification. Returning directly or indirectly from Guam, the US Virgin Islands or American Samoa the exemption is $1,600 instead. And on a same-day trip, or a second trip inside 30 days, it drops to $200 — where the behaviour changes in a way that catches people out every year. The $200 is not an exemption on the overage. Cross it and the entire value becomes dutiable, with no flat-rate band at all, which is why the same-day figure on this page jumps rather than climbing. On $1,500 of goods with a 6.5% rate that is the difference between $21 of duty after a proper trip and $98 on a day trip. A few practical points that make the difference between a smooth arrival and an unpleasant one. Family members travelling together on one declaration may pool their $800 exemptions, so a family of four covers $3,200 between them — but the $200 tier can never be pooled. Alcohol has its own allowance, generally one litre, with the excess charged at a flat 1.5%, and state law can be stricter than federal on what you may bring in at all. And the exemption applies to goods accompanying you: something you buy abroad and post home to yourself is a shipment, which puts it back on the other half of this page, where the $800 no longer exists. Declare everything on the CBP form. The duty is usually small and the penalty for an undeclared item is seizure.
Frequently asked questions
Is the $800 duty-free limit on packages gone?
On shipments, yes. The Section 321 de minimis exemption — the $800 a day of low-value parcels that entered free — was suspended for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025, then for every country in the world on 29 August 2025. CBP put the suspension into regulation with two interim final rules on 24 June 2026, and the statute itself is repealed from 1 July 2027. There is no threshold left: a $12 phone case and a $1,200 camera lens are both charged. The other $800 in US customs law, the personal exemption on goods you carry home in your own baggage, was never touched and is fully in force. Two rules, one number, and only one of them still exists.
Do I really owe duty on a $40 order from overseas now?
Yes, and usually more than the duty. A small parcel now clears as a real entry, so it picks up the merchandise processing fee and, far more painfully, the carrier's brokerage charge. On the $400 order in the worked example below, $26 of duty and $40 of tariff arrive alongside $2.69 of processing fee and $17.50 of brokerage. Scale that down to $40 of goods and the duty is a few dollars while the brokerage is still $17.50 — which is why the charge on a cheap parcel now routinely exceeds what the goods cost. Before 29 August 2025 the same order arrived with nothing to pay at all.
What duty rate applies to my item?
There is no rate for a category, only a rate for a line. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule sets duty article by article and turns on what the thing is made of, how it is constructed, where it was made and where it was bought — general rates run from Free to over 30%, and two products that look identical on a shelf routinely sit on different lines with different rates. A cotton shirt and a synthetic one are not the same line. Look yours up at hts.usitc.gov, which is the official schedule, and enter the general (column 1) rate. This page will not guess, which is exactly why that field opens at zero.
Is duty charged on the shipping cost too?
Not in the United States. Customs appraises an import on transaction value — the price actually paid or payable for the merchandise — so international freight and insurance generally sit outside the dutiable amount. This is the opposite of the CIF convention almost every VAT country uses, and it is the single most common error in an imported-parcel calculator: a tool written for the UK or the EU will charge you duty on the delivered value and quote a higher number than you owe. The shipping is still real money you spend, so this page adds it to the landed cost. It just is not taxed.
Why is the processing fee $2.69 on one parcel and $33.58 on another?
Because there are two entry types. An entry at or below the $2,500 informal threshold clears as an automated informal entry and pays a flat $2.69 for FY2026. Above that it becomes a formal entry and the fee is 0.3464% of the goods value, floored at $33.58 and capped at $651.50. On a small formal entry the floor is the whole story: the percentage does not reach $33.58 until roughly $9,694 of goods, so everything below that pays the same $33.58. All of these are federal-fiscal-year figures, effective from 1 October 2025 and re-indexed on 1 October 2026 — part-way through the calendar year, which is worth remembering if you read this page in the autumn.
What is the brokerage fee, and can I avoid it?
It is the carrier's own charge for preparing the customs entry and for advancing the duty to the government before you have paid it. UPS charges a disbursement fee of 3.5% of what it advances with a $14 minimum, plus entry preparation of roughly $10 to $20 on small shipments; FedEx raised its advancement fee on 20 July 2026 to the greater of $17.50 or 2.5%; DHL charges the same thing under the name processing fee. None of it is a government charge and none of it appears in any statute — it moves when the carrier decides it moves. You can avoid it only by using a carrier or service that does not levy one, or by clearing the entry yourself, which for a single parcel is rarely worth the afternoon.
How much can I bring home in my suitcase?
The general personal exemption is $800 of goods, if you have been out of the country at least 48 hours and have not claimed the exemption in the previous 30 days. Above it the next $1,000 is charged at a flat 3%, and anything above that is classified and appraised item by item. Two variants change the number: returning from Guam, the US Virgin Islands or American Samoa the exemption is $1,600, and on a same-day trip or a second trip inside 30 days it drops to $200. That $200 tier behaves differently and catches people out — cross it and the entire value becomes dutiable, not just the excess, with no flat-rate band at all.
Do I owe import VAT or sales tax as well?
There is no import VAT in the United States, so any calculator adding 20% or 21% on top of your duty was written for another country. What can still reach you is your own state's use tax, which is the sales tax equivalent on goods bought outside the state and brought in for use there. That is assessed by your state revenue department, not collected by CBP at the border, and the rules and enforcement differ enormously state by state. Ocean freight also carries a harbor maintenance fee that air, courier and postal shipments do not; this page does not model it, because a personal import almost never arrives by sea.