De minimis thresholds by country

The value below which a country waives duty, tax, or both, on an imported consignment. It exists because collecting a few dollars of duty on a small parcel costs more than the duty is worth — a logic that governments worldwide have been abandoning as parcel volumes exploded.

India, Nigeria and Brazil charge from the first unit of currency, and the United States joined them in August 2025 when the $800 exemption was suspended. The absence of a threshold is why duty calculators get so much search traffic in those markets.

They are separate policies. The UK relieves duty below £135 but charges VAT on everything, because VAT relief would put foreign sellers at an advantage over domestic ones. Canada goes further and uses different thresholds depending on whether the parcel came by post or by courier, and from where.

It is a well-known avoidance pattern and customs authorities treat it as one. Deliberately dividing a single order across consignments to stay under a de minimis threshold is generally treated as splitting a shipment, and where it is detected the consignments are aggregated and assessed together, usually with a penalty. The practice also collapses entirely in markets that have withdrawn the threshold, which now includes the two largest.

It follows the same valuation basis the country uses for duty. Where the customs value is CIF — most of the world — the freight and insurance count towards the threshold, so a £120 order with £20 shipping is over a £135 line once you add them. Where the basis is the goods alone, as in the United States, freight does not count. This is why the same order can be under the threshold in one market and over it in another with an identical figure.

They change the duty rate, not usually the threshold. A preferential agreement can take the duty rate to zero on qualifying goods, but only if you can prove origin — which normally means a certificate or a statement on the invoice, and rules of origin that a product assembled from imported components may not actually satisfy. Claiming preference you cannot document is a common and expensive audit finding. The tax remains due either way.

Per consignment as customs sees it, which is usually per parcel but not always. An order shipped in three parcels arriving together on one air waybill can be treated as a single consignment; the same three parcels arriving separately on separate waybills usually are not. Because deliberately arranging the latter to stay under a threshold is treated as shipment splitting, the practical rule is that the customs entry defines the consignment, not the shopping cart.