De Minimis Threshold by Country 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett | Last updated: September 20, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Four of the world’s largest import markets have removed a duty de minimis threshold since February 2025, and a fifth has legislated its removal. The United States suspended its $800 exemption, the European Union abolished €150 relief, Vietnam and Thailand scrapped theirs outright, and the United Kingdom’s £135 relief now expires by October 2028.
Quick Answer
There is no single de minimis threshold, and the number that matters is shrinking in most large markets. The United States has no duty-free threshold — the $800 Section 321 exemption has been suspended since 29 August 2025. The European Union removed its €150 duty relief on 1 July 2026 and charges a flat €3 per goods item instead. The United Kingdom still applies £135, Australia AUD 1,000, Japan JPY 10,000, South Korea USD 150, and Indonesia just USD 3. Axis Intelligence Research finds that the EU’s flat €3 duty equals 59.6% of the average declared value of a Chinese item line entering Finland, against 7.0% for an American one.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the EU’s flat €3 low-value duty represents 59.6% of the average declared value of a Chinese item line (€5.03) but only 7.0% of an American one (€42.99) — a burden 8.5 times heavier on the origin that supplies most of the volume.
- According to Finnish Customs, low-value import item lines into Finland fell 76.3% year on year in July 2026, the first month the €3 duty applied, and 66.5% against June 2026.
- According to Finnish Customs, China accounted for 98.5% of Finland’s low-value import item lines in the first half of 2026 but only 89.9% of their declared value.
- According to US Customs and Border Protection, the agency collected over $1 billion in duties on over 246 million low-value shipments between May 2025 and December 2025, after de minimis entry was withdrawn.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that four of the ten largest low-value import regimes it tracks have abolished a duty threshold since February 2025, and a fifth has set a statutory end date.
What Is the De Minimis Threshold, and Why Are Two Numbers Involved?
The de minimis threshold is the declared value below which a customs administration waives import duty because collecting it costs more than it raises. Almost every operator who gets burned on landed cost gets burned because they checked one number when there are two.
Duty de minimis is the value below which no tariff is charged. Tax de minimis is the value below which no VAT, GST or sales tax is charged. They are set separately, they move separately, and in most of the markets that still have a duty threshold, the tax threshold has already gone to zero. The EU removed its €22 VAT relief in 2021. Australia collects GST from the first dollar through vendor registration while leaving a AUD 1,000 customs threshold intact. The UK charges import VAT on consignments at or below £135 while duty relief still applies.
The valuation basis is the third trap. Most administrations assess against CIF — goods plus freight plus insurance — so a $130 item with $25 shipping clears a $150 threshold in a FOB market and breaches it in a CIF one.
Mia Scarlett: Read a threshold table the way you’d read a fee schedule rather than a tariff schedule. The headline number tells you when duty starts. It tells you nothing about whether the parcel needs an entry, who files it, who is liable, or what the broker bills for the privilege. Across 2025 and 2026, the number moved in a handful of markets and the filing obligation moved in almost all of them. The second change is the expensive one, and it is invisible in every threshold table on the internet.
De Minimis Threshold by Country: 2026 Reference Table
Values below are duty thresholds unless stated. Status is as of 19 September 2026.
| Market | Duty de minimis | Tax (VAT/GST) de minimis | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | None (suspended) | None | $800 Section 321 exemption suspended for all origins since 29 Aug 2025; indefinite in regulation since 24 Jun 2026 | CBP |
| European Union (27) | None — €3 flat duty per goods item up to €150 | None (VAT from €0 since 2021) | €150 relief abolished 1 Jul 2026 under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382; €3 applies until 1 Jul 2028 | European Commission |
| United Kingdom | £135 | None (import VAT applies below £135) | Relief to be removed by October 2028; draft legislation published 13 Jul 2026 | GOV.UK |
| Australia | AUD 1,000 | None in practice — GST vendor-collected | Unchanged; sellers above AUD 75,000 turnover register and charge GST at checkout | Carrier and customs-technology references |
| Japan | JPY 10,000 | JPY 10,000 | Unchanged | Carrier references |
| South Korea | USD 150 | USD 150 | Unchanged | DHL market guidance |
| Singapore | SGD 400 | None — GST from first dollar | GST extended to low-value goods under the Overseas Vendor Registration regime | DHL market guidance |
| Malaysia | MYR 500 | None — 10% Low Value Goods tax below MYR 500 | LVG tax in force | DHL market guidance |
| Thailand | None | None | THB 1,500 threshold eliminated 1 Jan 2026; duty plus 7% VAT from the first baht | Hinrich Foundation |
| Vietnam | None | None | VND 1,000,000 express exemption abolished 18 Feb 2025 | Hinrich Foundation |
| Indonesia | USD 3 (FOB) | USD 3 | Cut from USD 75 in 2020; lowest monetary threshold among major economies | DHL market guidance |
| Türkiye | €30 | €30 | Cut from €150 in Aug 2024; lump-sum rate of 30% on EU-origin goods, 60% on others | Hinrich Foundation |
| India | None | None | Duties and GST from the first rupee | Hinrich Foundation |
Canada operates three parallel regimes rather than one threshold — courier consignments from the United States and Mexico clear duty-free to CAD 150 and tax-free to CAD 40 under CUSMA, while postal traffic falls under an older CAD 20 rule — and Axis Intelligence Research has not traced the current architecture to a primary Canadian source, so it is described rather than tabulated. Brazil and Mexico are excluded on the same basis. A table that guesses three rows discredits the other thirteen.
What “no threshold” means in the United States
The $800 figure has not been lowered. It still sits in 19 U.S.C. § 1321. What has gone is duty-free treatment under it, suspended for all countries and, since the interim final rules of 24 June 2026, for every mode including the international postal network (Federal Register). Bona fide gifts up to $100 and personal articles accompanying travellers survive. Commercial parcels do not.
How Much Does the EU’s €3 Duty Actually Cost? The Low-Value Burden Ratio
A flat charge is regressive by construction. Everyone repeats that. Nobody has put a number on it, because doing so requires the average declared value of a low-value item line by origin — and only one customs administration in Europe has published it.
So Axis Intelligence Research built the measure.
LVB — Low-Value Burden Ratio
LVB expresses the fixed low-value charge in a destination market as a percentage of the average declared value of an item line from a given origin. It answers the question a threshold table cannot: how hard does this regime actually bite, and on whom.
Formula: LVB = (fixed charge per goods item ÷ mean declared value per item line) × 100
Inputs, both fetched and dated: the €3 flat duty per goods item under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, and Finnish Customs’ published mean declared value per low-value item line by origin for the first half of 2026.
LVB readings — EU entry via Finland, as of 19 September 2026
| Origin | Mean declared value per item line | €3 duty | LVB |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | €5.03 | €3.00 | 59.6% |
| United Kingdom | €35.39 | €3.00 | 8.5% |
| United States | €42.99 | €3.00 | 7.0% |
Axis Intelligence Research finds the €3 duty falls 8.5 times more heavily on Chinese item lines than American ones and 7.0 times more heavily than British ones. The EU did not set an origin-specific tariff. It set a flat fee against a trade flow whose average unit value differs by a factor of eight and a half, and the incidence followed the unit value.
The scenario that operators should be modelling now: the Union handling fee proposed for November 2026 is expected to be a few euros per item and has not been fixed. At €2, the combined charge reaches €5 against a €5.03 Chinese item line — an LVB of 99.4%. That reading is a scenario, not a measurement, and it will be replaced with an actual figure once the fee amount is adopted.
Mia Scarlett: Strip the politics out and this is a pricing decision, not a trade decision. A €3 line item against a €5 good is not a duty, it is a repricing of the entire ultra-low-ticket category — and the category is the volume. Against a €35 British item line the same charge is a rounding error that no merchant will restructure a supply chain to avoid. The Commission wrote one rule; the market read two completely different rules out of it, depending on what it sells.
What Happens to Parcel Volumes When a Threshold Is Removed?
This is the part every threshold table skips, and it is the only part that tells you what a policy change is worth.
Finland is the cleanest reading available anywhere in the EU, because Finnish Customs publishes low-value item-line counts monthly and the €3 duty landed on a single date.
| Period | Finland low-value item lines | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 vs 2024 | over 50 million parcels in 2025 | +46% |
| H1 2026 vs H1 2025 | — | +11% |
| July 2026 vs July 2025 | — | −76.3% |
| July 2026 vs June 2026 | — | −66.5% |
Source: Finnish Customs, reported August 2026.
Two years of compounding growth reversed in thirty days. The composition tells you why: textiles were 28.1% of Finland’s low-value imports in the first half of 2026, footwear and headwear 12.6%, plastic and rubber goods 10.1% — categories where the average item line is worth about a fifth of what the new charge costs.
The United States produced a comparable signal a year earlier through a different mechanism. According to the Universal Postal Union, postal traffic to the US fell 81% on 29 August 2025 against the previous Friday, and 88 designated operators suspended some or all US-bound services. CBP’s counter-reading is equally true and equally important: only 5% of de minimis shipments moved by mail. The postal collapse was the loudest effect, not the largest one.
Put beside each other, the two events point the same way. When the charge is small relative to the good, volume adapts. When the charge is large relative to the good — or when the filing obligation has no owner — volume stops.
The revenue side
CBP reported collecting over $1 billion in duties on over 246 million low-value shipments between the start of the phase-out in May 2025 and December 2025 (CBP).
Formula: $1,000,000,000 ÷ 246,000,000 = $4.07 per shipment
Axis Intelligence Research estimates roughly $4.07 in collected duty per low-value shipment across that window — a figure examined in more depth in our cross-border e-commerce statistics dataset. Both inputs are floors, so the estimate is directional. It is also the point: $4.07 is not what restructured the channel. The customs entry behind it was.
Which Markets Have Removed a Threshold Since 2024?
Of the thirteen regimes tabulated above, Axis Intelligence Research counts four abolitions, one legislated expiry and one deep cut inside thirty-one months.
| Date | Market | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 2024 | Türkiye | Threshold cut from €150 to €30 |
| 18 Feb 2025 | Vietnam | VND 1,000,000 express exemption abolished |
| 2 May 2025 | United States | De minimis withdrawn for China and Hong Kong |
| 29 Aug 2025 | United States | De minimis suspended for all origins |
| 1 Jan 2026 | Thailand | THB 1,500 threshold eliminated |
| 1 Jul 2026 | European Union | €150 relief abolished; €3 flat duty begins |
| By Oct 2028 | United Kingdom | £135 relief to be removed |
| 1 Jul 2027 | United States | Statutory repeal of the exemption takes effect |
Sources: CBP and Federal Register (US); European Commission (EU); GOV.UK (UK); Hinrich Foundation (Türkiye, Vietnam, Thailand).
The sequencing matters more than the count. Türkiye moved before the US; ASEAN members moved before Europe; the UK moved last and brought its own date forward by six months on 23 June 2026 after the EU acted. No single market is setting the direction. Each is responding to the same arithmetic — item counts growing faster than the customs headcount able to inspect them — and to the fear of becoming the last open door on the block.
Mia Scarlett: The competitive dynamic here is diversion, and it is the reason the remaining thresholds will not hold. A market that keeps a generous threshold while its neighbours close theirs does not keep its consumer surplus; it inherits everyone else’s redirected volume, at the exact unit value that generates the most paperwork and the least revenue. The UK is the live case. It has a £135 relief, it sits next to a bloc that just abolished €150, and it accelerated its own timetable within twelve weeks of the EU’s start date. That is not coincidence, it is queue management.
What Replaces a Threshold Once It Goes?
Not a lower number. A filing regime.
The EU’s €3 duty attaches per goods item, meaning per tariff classification rather than per physical unit. Finnish Customs works the example plainly: three shirts and ten pairs of socks in one consignment are two goods items and attract €6, but if the three shirts are declared as three separate items the declarant pays €9. Declaration discipline is now a direct cost line.
Product identifiers become mandatory across the EU on 1 November 2026, having been voluntary since 1 July. The proposed Union handling fee is a separate instrument from the €3 duty, is expected from November 2026, and its amount has not been set — Finnish Customs describes it as a few euros, payable regardless of consignment value, including on goods above €150.
The UK has gone further in one respect. Its published response rules out a simplified tariff bucket: sellers will identify correct commodity codes and apply UK Global Tariff rates, with low-value consignments handled in a dedicated regime using a reduced data set and duty payable quarterly. Excise goods, import restrictions, trade defence measures and non-ad-valorem rates are carved out.
The US requires the most: formal or informal entry with 10-digit HTSUS classification for every commercial parcel, with duty remitted by the carrier or a CBP-approved qualified party.
Three administrations, three mechanisms, one outcome. The unit of compliance has moved from the consignment to the tariff line.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this article was retrieved from a fetched source document on 19 September 2026 and logged with its URL and retrieval date in the accompanying dataset. Primary sources: US Customs and Border Protection, the US Federal Register, the European Commission Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, the Council of the European Union, Finnish Customs (Tulli), GOV.UK and HMRC, and the Universal Postal Union. Non-primary sources are the Hinrich Foundation (Türkiye, Vietnam, Thailand threshold changes), DHL market guidance (South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia) and Finnish Customs data as reported in Finnish press for the July 2026 volume series. Each is flagged is_primary = no in the dataset.
LVB construction. The Low-Value Burden Ratio divides a market’s fixed low-value charge by the mean declared value of an item line from a stated origin, both drawn from fact-table rows. Finland is used as the EU reading because it is the only member state publishing mean declared value by origin; the €3 charge is EU-wide, so the ratio travels to any member state where an equivalent mean is published. Readings carry a snapshot date and will not be silently restated when inputs update.
Derived figures. Three figures are calculated by Axis Intelligence Research and disclosed inline with their formulas: the three LVB readings, the €5 combined-charge scenario, and US duty per shipment ($4.07), which is carried at the same value and as-of date as our cross-border e-commerce dataset.
Scope. Duty and tax thresholds for commercial B2C imports. Canada, Brazil and Mexico are described but not tabulated pending primary-source confirmation of their current architecture. Rates of duty above the threshold are out of scope, since they vary by commodity code and origin.
About This Dataset
de-minimis-threshold-by-country.csv contains every figure in this article as a row, with metric, value, unit, as_of_date, geography, source_org, source_document, source_url, retrieved_date, is_primary, axis_calculated and method_note columns. Long format, one row per observation, ISO 8601 dates, raw values with units held separately.
License: CC BY 4.0 — free to use, republish and redistribute with attribution.
Citation: Axis Intelligence Research, De Minimis Threshold by Country 2026, 2026.
Citation Block
APA — Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). De minimis threshold by country 2026: Duty-free import limits, what changed, and what removal did to parcel volumes. Axis Intelligence.
MLA — Axis Intelligence Research. “De Minimis Threshold by Country (2026): Duty-Free Import Limits, What Changed, and What Removal Did to Parcel Volumes.” Axis Intelligence, 2026.
Chicago — Axis Intelligence Research. “De Minimis Threshold by Country (2026): Duty-Free Import Limits, What Changed, and What Removal Did to Parcel Volumes.” Axis Intelligence, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
My supplier quotes FOB and the destination assesses CIF — which value is tested against the threshold?
The destination’s basis governs, and it is the one that catches people. Most administrations test CIF, so freight and insurance count toward the threshold even though your supplier’s invoice excludes them. Indonesia is a notable exception, testing FOB at USD 3. Build the landed-cost model on the destination’s basis, not the invoice, or every shipment near the line will clear differently from the forecast.
If a consignment contains five identical shirts, is the EU’s €3 charged once or five times?
Once, provided they share a commodity code and country of origin and are declared as a single goods item. Finnish Customs is explicit that declaring three identical shirts as three separate items triggers €9 instead of €3. The charge attaches to the declared goods item, so declaration hygiene is now a margin item — consolidating like goods reduces exposure, and mixed-category consignments multiply it.
Does an FTA or preferential origin get me under a threshold?
No — preference and de minimis are separate instruments. Preference reduces the rate applied above the threshold; it does not reinstate an exemption that has been withdrawn. In the EU, low-value goods granted preferential treatment are charged by commodity code rather than the €3 flat rate, which can be cheaper or dearer depending on the line. Canada’s CUSMA courier thresholds are the exception that proves the rule: there, the trade agreement set the threshold itself.
Who is the declarant for a low-value EU consignment, and what happens if there isn’t one?
The seller or importer — in practice the IOSS registrant, a special-arrangements user, or an indirect representative. The consumer is liable only in residual cases where a member state offers a citizen-facing declaration tool. Selling DTC into the EU without an IOSS registration or an indirect representative leaves the consignment with no declarant and no clearance path, which is a delivery failure rather than a duty problem.
Is consolidating orders into one larger shipment a legitimate way to reduce per-parcel charges?
Consolidating into a single commercial entry is standard practice and entirely legitimate; splitting one order into several to stay below a threshold is not. Where thresholds survive, aggregation rules catch multiple shipments from the same sender to the same recipient. The European Commission cited order-splitting and undervaluation as the specific abuses that justified abolishing the €150 relief, so the behaviour now attracts scrutiny in the market that removed the incentive for it.
Which large market still has a meaningful duty-free lane, and how long does it last?
The United Kingdom, at £135, and it is dated. Removal was announced at Autumn Budget 2025 for March 2029 at the latest, brought forward six months on 23 June 2026, with draft legislation published 13 July 2026. Commencement is set by Treasury regulations, by October 2028 at the latest. Import VAT already applies below £135, so only the duty position changes.
Does the end of a duty threshold mean my goods now pay a tariff, or something else?
Usually something else first. The tariff is often small — Axis Intelligence Research puts average collected US duty at roughly $4.07 a shipment — while the entry, the bond, the broker’s per-entry fee and the classification work are fixed costs that attach to every box regardless of value. High-frequency, low-average-order-value models absorb the worst of it. A single $600 consignment and fifteen $40 consignments carry the same duty and fifteen times the clearance overhead.
How much volume actually disappears when a threshold goes?
Finland is the only clean measurement so far: item lines fell 76.3% year on year in the first month of the €3 duty, from a base growing 46% the year before. Expect the effect to scale with the ratio of the charge to the average unit value rather than with the charge itself, which is what the Low-Value Burden Ratio measures. Markets shipping €5 goods see collapse; markets shipping €40 goods see a rounding error.
Do I still owe VAT or GST on a shipment that clears under the duty threshold?
Almost always, yes. Tax thresholds have been removed well ahead of duty thresholds in most large markets: the EU since 2021, the UK for imports at or below £135, Singapore through vendor registration, Australia through the GST vendor-collection model above AUD 75,000 in turnover, Malaysia through the 10% Low Value Goods tax. Treating a duty threshold as a tax exemption is the single most common landed-cost error.
Will the UK copy the EU’s flat-rate approach?
Its published position says no. The UK response ruled out a simplified tariff bucket, so sellers will classify to commodity code and apply UK Global Tariff rates within a dedicated low-value regime using a reduced data set and quarterly duty payment. That is closer to the American model than the European one — classification accuracy becomes the cost centre rather than a flat fee.
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