In the world of international shipping, there are many things one should consider and make sure of before ordering. One of these things is regarding customs duties and taxes in the destination country. As soon as you place an order from a foreign country, you become an importer of the ordered products, and there are rules that apply; most noticeably the rules for duties and taxes.
Duties and Taxes
The two main fees that are applicable to any international order are Customs duties and taxes (eg VAT). These fees are controlled by and have to be paid to the government of the destination country, not to the seller of the products, therefore the sellers are not responsible for them.
Apart from these charges, there might be some other extra fees, such as additional in-country shipping, customs service fees, storage fees, etc.
These fees are required to be paid before or at the time of delivery of the parcel.
How much are these fees?
Customs duties and taxes vary depending on each country.
For some countries, they have thresholds, and from that value duties and taxes are required to be paid. Packages under the value of the threshold are exempt from duties and taxes.
We have attempted to collect these thresholds for the countries we ship to, to help our customers make educated decisions when placing orders.
Please note, that these are for information purposes only! We still recommend contacting your local authorities to make sure about the exact customs rules. We can not take responsibility for this data and are unable to further track any changes and updates.
If you have any information regarding duties and taxes of your country you would like to share to help other customers, please feel free to contact us at office(at)sazentea(dot)com.
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Customs process
When an international package arrives at a country, they go through customs.* If the value of the package is under the threshold it is released for delivery immediately, if not the customs process starts by the delivery service contacting the recipient.
*Some delivery services (eg. DHL, FedEx) place all packages under customs without exception, while others (eg. postal services in some countries) are not as strict.
DAP and DDP
We offer two kinds of delivery services, DAP (Delivered At Place) and DDP (Delivered Duty Paid).
DDP is a convenient method of paying for duties and taxes in advance when placing the order. This method is only available for DHL at the moment.
Other services such as postal services (EMS, ePacket, SAL) or FedEx are only available as DAP, when - if they apply - duties and taxes have to be paid to the delivery service before the package is delivered.
Please note that in any of these cases these fees end up being paid to your government, neither we, nor the courier services keep these fees to themselves.
We hope you will find this post useful and helpful in making educated decisions when placing an online order. If you have any questions or extra information you would like to share, please don’t hesitate to contact us!