Declared value: what to write, and who pays the duty
What goes in the value box, and who gets the bill at the other end.
Two boxes on a customs form cause more trouble than the rest combined: the declared value, and whichever field decides who pays the duty. They are related, and both are routinely filled in wrong by people acting in good faith.
What “value” means here
The declared value is what the goods are worth in the transaction, in the currency you state. For a sale, that is the price the customer paid. Not your cost, not the wholesale price, not what you would charge a different customer, and not zero because it was a promotional item.
Three specific cases that confuse people:
A gift still has a value. It is what the goods would sell for, and writing
0 on a genuine gift does not make it duty free, it makes the declaration
implausible. Countries have a gift allowance precisely so that a modest declared
value clears without duty; declaring nothing forgoes the mechanism.
A replacement sent free to a customer still has a value. The goods are worth something even though no money changed hands this time. Some countries have a procedure for free replacements, and it works only if the parcel is declared honestly and marked as such.
A sample has a value even when it is unsaleable. Nominal is not nothing.
Whether shipping cost is included in the value depends on the destination’s valuation rules rather than on your preference. Many customs authorities assess duty on the goods plus transport and insurance to the border. You declare the goods value in the box; the authority adds what its own rules require.
Undervaluing is the expensive mistake
It looks like it saves the customer money. What it actually does:
The declared value is normally the ceiling on compensation if the parcel is lost or destroyed. Declare a 200 EUR item at 20 EUR and you have capped your own claim at 20 EUR. Carriers apply this rigidly, and it is the most common way a seller discovers the shortcut afterwards.
It is also a false declaration. On a single parcel that is usually corrected with a demand for the right duty. Repeated across a shipping history it is treated as evasion, with penalties, seizure, and in serious cases the loss of the ability to ship at all.
And it frequently fails outright. Customs authorities have data on what things cost. An electronics item declared at a tenth of its obvious retail price gets the parcel held while the recipient is asked to produce the invoice, which is the exact delay everyone was trying to avoid, with duty owed anyway and a customer who now knows.
De minimis: the threshold nobody should quote from memory
Most countries have a value below which duty, and sometimes tax, is not collected. That is the de minimis threshold.
Two warnings, and this guide will not give you a number for either.
Thresholds change, sometimes with very little notice and sometimes politically. Several major markets have narrowed or removed theirs in recent years, specifically to capture low-value cross-border e-commerce. Any figure written here would be wrong for somebody within months, which is why this site does not publish them.
The duty threshold and the tax threshold are usually different. A parcel can be under the duty threshold and still owe import VAT or GST from the first unit of value. Many countries now collect that tax at the point of sale from the seller or the marketplace instead of at the border, which changes what the recipient sees but not whether the tax exists.
Check the destination’s own customs website for the current figures, on the day you need them.
DDU and DDP: who gets the bill
This is the decision that generates the angry email.
DDU, delivered duty unpaid, sometimes labelled DAP. The recipient pays. When the parcel reaches the destination, customs assesses duty and tax, and the carrier collects it from the recipient before releasing the parcel, along with a handling or clearance fee of its own.
That handling fee is the part that stings. It is charged by the carrier for doing the paperwork, it is often a flat amount, and on a small parcel it can exceed the duty itself. A customer who paid 30 EUR for a scarf and is asked for 18 EUR to receive it will refuse the parcel, and a refused parcel comes back to you at your cost.
DDP, delivered duty paid. You pay. Duty and tax are billed to you, usually through your carrier account, and the parcel is delivered without the recipient being asked for anything.
DDP costs more per parcel and eliminates the refusal problem. For anyone selling retail cross-border it is almost always the right choice, and the cost belongs in your pricing rather than as a surprise at the door.
If you ship DDU, say so plainly at checkout, before payment. “Import duties may be payable on delivery and are the responsibility of the recipient” is a sentence that prevents a category of dispute entirely. Marketplaces increasingly require this wording, and buyers who are told up front mostly do not mind.
Note that a self-printed handling label does not set the terms. DDU or DDP is agreed with the carrier when postage is bought and recorded in their system. What you write on the box does not change who is billed.
Getting the currency right
State the currency explicitly, in ISO letters: 120 EUR, not 120 and not a
bare symbol. $ is ambiguous across at least a dozen currencies, and a customs
officer reading a form does not guess in your favour.
The value should be in the currency of the transaction. The destination converts at its own official rate on its own date, and that conversion is not something you control or should try to pre-empt by converting yourself.
The practical summary
Declare the real transaction value, in a named currency, with the shipping terms agreed with your carrier and stated to your customer before they pay. Look up the destination’s current thresholds rather than relying on any figure you remember.
The whole of customs is one idea repeated: the form should say what is actually true, in enough detail that nobody has to open the box to find out. Every rule above is a consequence of that.