What are the Duty and Tax Rules for Each Country?

Taxes: Each country taxes differently. Some countries have a general consumption tax commonly referred to as VAT (Value Added Tax) or GST (Goods and Services Tax). For example:

• Australia and Canada both have GST
• Canada also has HST (Harmonized Sales Tax), PST (Provincial Sales Tax) or QST (Quebec Sales Tax), depending on the province.
• Some destinations, such as Hong Kong, do not have taxes applied to their imports.

Passport will calculate the appropriate tax rate by country, including when de minimis value affects the calculation.

Duty: Duty (aka customs duty) is a tax levied on imports by the customs authorities of a country. Compared to taxes, which tend to be relatively consistent across product categories, duty percentages usually vary for each product category. The variance can be anything from 0% to 100%.

De Minimis: De Minimis is a threshold exempting imports from duty and or tax and differs by country. The De Minimis value has a significant impact on e-commerce as B2C orders are typically a much lower value than B2B.

Here is a table with the De Minimis for the highest volume shippers: