Shipping to the United States: duty thresholds and line choice

The number most buyers still carry in their head is 800 US dollars. For years that figure was the de minimis line: a shipment under it entered without duty and without the paperwork that duty triggers, which is why a generation of buying guides treats it as a fixed feature of the landscape rather than as a policy that could change. It was also widely misquoted, because the rule was never per parcel in the way people assumed. It applied per importer, per day, and a consolidated haul landing as several parcels on the same afternoon could be treated as one entry rather than as three small ones.

As of our 2026 Q3 review, that number is not a reliable planning assumption. The exemption was narrowed and then suspended across 2025 and 2026, first for certain origins and then more broadly, and the postal clearance path that most small hauls used was closed as a separate matter with its own effective date. We are not going to print a replacement figure, because the position has moved more than once in eighteen months and any number we printed would be stale before the page aged. What we can state with confidence is the direction: low-value parcels have become ordinary entries more often than not.

The shape of the decision is what matters now. For a China-origin parcel entering the United States, three things drive the outcome: the clearance channel the line actually uses, the declared value on the entry, and whether duty is collected prepaid at the shipping desk or billed to you after arrival. The threshold question has become a channel question, and the channel is chosen when you pick a line rather than when the parcel lands. That is why this page spends most of its length on line properties rather than on a number.

Two charges get conflated in buyer reports, and separating them makes invoices readable. The first is duty: a tariff assessed on the goods, which depends on what the item is classified as and where it was made. The second is the clearing charge: whatever the carrier or its broker bills for presenting the entry and advancing money on your behalf. The United States does not levy a value-added tax at import, so when a report says tax, it is almost always duty plus that handling line, and the handling line is frequently the larger of the two on a parcel of modest value.

We do not publish a duty rate table, and we would be cautious about any desk that does. The rate is a function of the item rather than of the destination: two parcels of identical value can differ by a wide margin because one is classified as footwear and the other as a textile accessory, and because additional measures may attach to a given origin at a given time and expire later. That is a per-item calculation, which is why the duty estimate tool asks for a category and a value rather than for a country alone, and why we ask you for both before it will give you anything.

The charge that surprises people is the third one: the disbursement or advancement fee. When a carrier pays duty on your behalf to release the parcel, it bills you back plus a handling margin, and on a low-value parcel that margin can be a meaningful share of the total that lands on your card. We have seen reports across a wide band and we will not quote a percentage, because the band is wide enough that a single figure would be misleading. The honest instruction is to read the fee line on the arrival notice before you assume the total is duty alone.

The ranges below come from buyer reports we logged during 2026 Q3, split by the type of line rather than by brand names, because brand names change every season and line types do not. Postal economy service on this lane has been reported from roughly two to five weeks door to door. Commercial express has been reported from roughly five days to two weeks. Dedicated line services sit between those two, and the reports there cluster from about eight days to three weeks, with the occasional outlier in either direction that we treat as a data error until it is confirmed by a second report.

Treat those as the width of the lane rather than as a promise about your parcel. What moves a parcel within its range is nearly always one of four things: how long it sat in the origin warehouse waiting for a consolidation to close, whether screening pulled it for a second look, how backed up the port of entry was in that particular week, and whether a customs question was raised and answered slowly. Carrier choice sets the range; those four set your position inside it, and three of the four are under your control to some degree.

A single buyer report is an anecdote and should be used as a boundary rather than as an average. If somebody reports four days on an express line, that tells you four days is possible, not that four days is typical, and the next report on the same line may well say eleven. The reports we weight most heavily are the ones that state the ship date, the arrival date and the line, because those three fields can be checked against a tracking record instead of being taken on trust from a screenshot.

The first hold is a value mismatch. The figure the line transmitted electronically does not agree with the invoice inside the box, or with the payment record the platform can show on request. This is the most common hold and the most easily avoided, because it is created before shipping rather than at the border: a declared value that a warehouse clerk typed and an invoice that a seller printed are two different documents, and nothing reconciles them unless you do it yourself before the parcel leaves.

The second is a classification question. A consolidated haul containing a hoodie, a pair of sneakers and a phone case is three classifications on one entry, and if the manifest describes all of it as apparel, the entry gets a query because the description does not account for what is visible. Mixed hauls are entirely normal for this lane, and no desk that has shipped many of them would call yours unusual. What gets a parcel held is a manifest that describes a mixed haul as a single thing, because then the classifier has nothing to work with except the outer carton and a scale reading.

The third is a restricted item embedded in a general haul: lithium batteries inside electronics, aerosols, liquids above the small-quantity limits, or branded goods described as generics to keep the description simple. These are documented rather than argued. If you can produce the specification sheet or the listing that shows what the item is, the hold usually resolves within a round or two of correspondence. If the parcel description is the only evidence you have, it usually does not resolve at all, and the parcel ends up returned at your cost.

Prepare a commercial invoice before the parcel ships, not after it is held. One line per item, in English, with a plain description of what the object is, the quantity, the unit value, and the material where that matters for classification. Add the category you would want a classifier to land on, since a suggestion that is consistent with the goods is more useful than an empty field. This is a document you are writing for a stranger who has ninety seconds, so plain nouns beat marketing copy every single time.

Keep the settlement record that shows what you actually paid for the goods. On this lane the common failure is that a value was declared low at the warehouse and the payment record shows something else, and the payment record is the one that survives scrutiny because it was not written by you and cannot be revised afterwards. Screenshot the order total at the moment of payment, including the agent fee and the domestic leg, and store it next to the order confirmation rather than in a photo library you will never search.

Keep the visual evidence together in one folder: the QC photos, the listing images, and any specification the seller published on the product page. When a hold is about what an object is, photographs of the object with a scale in frame resolve it faster than any argument, and a listing screenshot answers the question of what you thought you were buying and what you paid for it. Name the folder with the tracking number, because the moment you need it is the moment you will not remember which haul it belonged to.

Four properties matter more than headline speed on this lane. First, who clears the entry: a line that handles entry itself removes an entire class of correspondence from your week and gives you one party to ask. Second, how duty is billed, prepaid at the shipping desk or invoiced after arrival, because postpaid duty on a low-value parcel frequently costs more in handling than in duty itself. Third, whether tracking is granular enough to distinguish a customs hold from a sorting delay. Fourth, whether the line accepts the categories in your haul at all, which is a question to settle before packing rather than after.

For a first haul to this destination we suggest a line that bills duty prepaid even when it is not the cheapest option on the comparison you run. The reasoning is not caution for its own sake: the point of a first haul is to learn the process without an invoice arriving three weeks later from a party you did not choose and cannot easily question. Once you know your own category mix, your own tolerance for correspondence and your own queue at the origin warehouse, move to whichever line your reports support.

Split items off into a second shipment when the categories in your haul are governed by different rules rather than when the value crosses a round number. A parcel of sneakers and a parcel of cosmetics are two different conversations with two different sets of documents, and separating them at the warehouse costs less than explaining the combination later under time pressure. That decision is a paperwork decision rather than a duty decision, and it is made before the parcel is packed and sealed.