Reviewed 30 September 2026 · quarterly cycle
Who pays the duty invoice, me or the seller?
The recipient pays, and where a courier advances the amount it invoices you afterwards. The seller has no part in the border assessment.
The evidence
The structure is that the importing party owes the assessment. In a personal haul that is you, regardless of who the seller is or where the agent is registered. A seller that collects tax at the point of sale has collected it on behalf of an authority, which is a different mechanism producing a similar outcome, but where nothing was collected at the point of sale the border assessment lands on the recipient.
Where a courier advances the amount to release the parcel, it invoices you for two things: the tax or duty itself, and a handling charge for advancing it. The handling charge is the line that surprises buyers, and it is charged per parcel rather than per item, which is why splitting has a cost that is easy to overlook when planning around a threshold.
The payment window matters more than the amount. Courier invoices carry a stated period, and an unpaid disbursement escalates to a collections process rather than reverting to a customs hold. That means ignoring the invoice does not return the parcel to a held state; it converts a customs matter into a debt matter, which is a worse position with fewer remedies.
When this does not apply
Where the seller is registered to collect tax at the point of sale for your destination, the amount may already be settled and the parcel arrives with nothing further due. The way to tell which applies is whether your checkout total included a tax line, not whether the seller mentioned tax in the listing.