Estimate customs duty on any shipment — and the true landed cost before you commit to buy.
The factory quotes $500. The freight forwarder quotes $40. Your spreadsheet says the unit economics work — and then the shipment arrives and customs wants another $55 you never budgeted. Import duty is the tax governments charge on goods crossing their borders, and it is the line item that blindsides more new importers than any other. Our free Import Duty Calculator estimates the duty from your item value, the duty rate, shipping, and insurance — and rolls it all into the total landed cost, the only cost number that matters when you decide what to charge.
The key insight most beginners miss: duty is usually not calculated on the item value alone. Most countries assess duty on the CIF value — Cost + Insurance + Freight. That $500 item with $40 shipping and $10 insurance is dutiable at $550, so a 10% rate costs $55, not $50. The $5 difference is small on one shipment; across a container it is real money. And duty is only the start of the landed-cost stack: merchandise processing fees, harbor maintenance fees, customs broker charges, and domestic freight all pile on after.
Enter your four numbers and get the dutiable value, the duty amount, and the total landed cost instantly — plus a read on whether your duty rate is low, moderate, or high enough to rethink your sourcing.
Every import bill is built from the same stack, and duty sits in the middle of it. At the base is the item value — what you paid the supplier, usually on FOB (Free On Board) terms, meaning the supplier’s responsibility ends when the goods cross the ship’s rail. On top goes international freight and insurance. Those three together form the CIF value (Cost, Insurance, Freight) — the number most customs authorities use as the dutiable value, the base the duty percentage is applied to. The United States is a notable exception: US customs generally assesses duty on the FOB value (excluding international freight and insurance), which is one reason the widget shows the CIF breakdown explicitly — know which base your country uses.
The duty rate itself comes from two coordinates: the product’s HS code (Harmonized System — the global 6-to-10-digit product classification) and the country of origin. The same cotton t-shirt can face 0% from a free-trade partner and 16.5% from elsewhere. Misclassifying the HS code is the classic importer error: it can mean overpaying for years — or underpaying and getting a back-duty bill with penalties. When in doubt, pay a customs broker for a binding classification ruling; it is the cheapest insurance in importing.
Landed cost is the grand total: item value + freight + insurance + duty + every other charge to get the goods to your warehouse door — merchandise processing fees (~0.3464% in the US, capped), harbor maintenance, broker fees ($100–$200 per entry), and domestic trucking. The widget computes the core four; treat the result as the minimum landed cost and add broker and domestic freight for the full picture.
Two more concepts that shape real duty bills: the de minimis threshold (shipments under a value — $800 in the US — often enter duty-free, which is why cross-border e-commerce parcels slip under the radar) and free trade agreements (USMCA, EU FTAs, and others can zero out duty entirely for qualifying goods with proper certificates of origin — always ask your supplier for one).
Key terms:
The formula is simple; the inputs are where importers go wrong. The duty rate is the hard part — it hides in tariff schedules behind HS codes and trade agreements. Spend your diligence there; the arithmetic is the easy 10%.
You order $500 of goods from a supplier. Freight is $40, insurance $10, and the duty rate for the HS code is 10%:
The $500 quote became $605 before broker fees. Anyone pricing off the $500 invoice is working with an 18% cost underestimate.
You import $2,000 of jackets. Freight $180, insurance $25. The HS code carries a 27.9% duty rate (apparel runs high):
This is why apparel importers obsess over HS classification and origin country: a few classification digits or a different factory country can move the rate 10+ points — $220 on this shipment per point.
The Amazon private-label seller. She imports 500 units of a kitchen gadget at $6 each ($3,000), freight $450, insurance $40, duty rate 7.5%. Dutiable: $3,490; duty $261.75; landed $3,751.75 → $7.50/unit. Her $24.99 retail price leaves healthy room — but only because she computed landed cost before setting the price. Sellers who price off the $6 invoice discover the $1.50/unit gap when the credit card bill arrives.
The furniture importer. A container of chairs: $18,000 goods, $3,800 ocean freight, $220 insurance, duty rate 0% (the HS code is duty-free under the trade agreement — with a certificate of origin on file). Dutiable value barely matters; landed is $22,020 plus port fees. His lesson: the certificate of origin is worth more than any freight negotiation — without it, the same container would face thousands in duty.
The cross-border e-commerce parcel. A customer in the US orders a £120 ($150) coat from a UK shop, shipped direct. Under the $800 de minimis threshold, it enters duty-free. The shop’s entire US business model rests on that threshold — and on the political risk that it changes. De minimis is policy, not physics; price with a contingency.
The first-time importer’s surprise. He budgets $500 goods + $40 freight, duty “about 10%” — expects ~$594. The actual bill: dutiable $550, duty $55, plus merchandise processing fee, plus $150 broker minimum, plus $120 domestic trucking = $919. The duty math was right; the stack was incomplete. Rule: the widget gives the core; add broker + domestic freight + port fees for the real landed number, especially on small shipments where fixed fees dominate.
E-commerce private label: duty is a per-unit cost like any other — bake it into the unit economics before choosing a product. A product with 25% duty needs a proportionally higher retail price or lower factory cost than the same product at 5%. Many product-selection spreadsheets add a “duty-adjusted margin” column for exactly this reason.
Fashion and textiles: among the highest duty categories (often 15–30%+), with rates varying by fiber, construction, and gender of garment — yes, the tariff schedule distinguishes men’s from women’s shirts. Sourcing decisions in apparel are duty decisions first, labor-cost decisions second.
Electronics: many components and finished electronics carry low or zero duty under the WTO Information Technology Agreement — but batteries, chargers, and accessories often do not. Split the shipment’s HS codes correctly instead of declaring everything under the finished good’s code.
Food and agriculture: duties plus sanitary/phytosanitary inspections, quotas, and seasonal rates. A 10% duty with a 3-week inspection delay can cost more in spoilage and storage than the tariff itself. Time is a landed cost too.
Furniture and home goods: bulky, low value-density — freight often exceeds duty as a cost driver. Optimize the container fill (CBM utilization) before optimizing the duty rate; a half-empty container wastes more than any tariff.
Reshoring math: when duty + freight + 8-week lead times + quality risk are honestly totaled, domestic manufacturing sometimes wins even at 2× the unit price — especially for heavy goods or fast-fashion cycles. Run the full landed comparison before assuming import is cheaper.
One pattern worth internalizing: duty is a percentage, so it scales with your selling price’s cost base — negotiate the factory price down $1 and you also cut duty, freight allocation, and insurance. Every dollar off FOB cascades through the whole stack. The highest-ROI hour in importing is often the factory negotiation, not the freight forwarder selection.
A brief history of the tariff: customs duties are among humanity’s oldest taxes — ancient Egypt taxed Nile cargo, Rome taxed provincial trade, and Britain’s 19th-century Corn Laws made tariffs the defining political issue of an era. The modern HS code system dates to 1988, harmonizing 200+ countries onto one classification language. The US de minimis threshold of $800 (raised from $200 in 2016) quietly created the cross-border e-commerce parcel boom — a single policy number reshaping global retail. Today’s tariff landscape shifts with trade policy; the widget’s editable rate field exists because the only constant in duty is change.
Worked scenario — the sourcing switch: you import $10,000 of goods at 25% duty from Country A: dutiable ~$10,800 (with freight/insurance), duty ~$2,700, landed ~$13,500+. A supplier in Country B (FTA partner) quotes $10,600 — $600 more expensive — with 0% duty: landed ~$11,400. The “expensive” supplier is $2,100 cheaper landed. This is the calculation that should precede every sourcing decision: compare landed quotes, never FOB quotes. The widget makes it a 30-second comparison.
Edge cases and pro tips: samples and prototypes can often enter under temporary import or sample provisions at reduced rates — ask your broker before paying full duty on $2,000 of samples. Duty drawback refunds duty on imported goods that are re-exported — if you import components and export finished goods, you may be owed money. Related-party pricing (buying from your own overseas factory) gets transfer-pricing scrutiny from customs — keep arm’s-length documentation. And currency: duty is assessed in the importing country’s currency at the exchange rate on the entry date — a volatile FX week can move your duty bill.
When this calculator is not enough: it estimates the core duty on a CIF base — it does not model merchandise processing fees, harbor maintenance, anti-dumping/countervailing duties (which can exceed 100% on targeted products/countries), broker fees, port charges, domestic freight, or the US FOB-base nuance. Before a real shipment, send the commercial invoice and packing list to a licensed customs broker for a landed-cost quote. The widget is for planning and pricing; the broker is for compliance.
Import duty formulas: dutiable value (CIF) = item value + shipping + insurance. Duty = dutiable value × duty rate. Total landed cost = item value + shipping + insurance + duty (+ broker, port, and domestic freight fees in practice). US customs generally uses FOB (excluding freight/insurance) as the dutiable base; most other countries use CIF. Duty rate depends on HS code and country of origin; FTAs can reduce it to zero with a certificate of origin. Example: $500 + $40 + $10 = $550 dutiable; 10% → $55 duty; $605 landed. Source: Sigma Calculator, Import Duty Calculator, https://sigmacalculator.net/e-commerce-calculators/import-duty-calculator/
Cite this page as: Import Duty Calculator, Sigma Calculator, https://sigmacalculator.net/e-commerce-calculators/import-duty-calculator/
Last updated: October 12, 2026