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The US scrapped its $800 duty-free limit in 2025. The EU scrapped its €150 limit on 1 July 2026. Here is exactly what you now pay on parcels from Germany — and the three legitimate ways to cut your landed cost.
For twenty years, international online shopping ran on a simple promise: keep your order small enough, and it slipped past customs duty-free. That promise is gone. The United States scrapped its $800 duty-free threshold in August 2025. The European Union scrapped its €150 threshold on 1 July 2026. The UK has announced its own £135 relief will follow.
If you shop German stores and ship worldwide, this is the single biggest change to your costs in a decade — and most of the advice still floating around the internet is now simply wrong. This guide explains what changed, what you will actually pay on your next parcel from Germany, and the three legitimate ways to keep your landed cost down.
De minimis is the value threshold below which a country waives customs duty because collecting it costs more than it earns. It was designed for postcards and gifts — not for the era of global e-commerce.
Then the volume exploded. The European Commission reports that roughly 4.6 billion low-value parcels entered the EU in 2024 — about 12 million a day, and double the previous year — rising to nearly 5.9 billion in 2025. At that scale, "too small to bother taxing" stopped being true. Every major economy has now reached the same conclusion.
The US removed de minimis for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025, then for every country on 29 August 2025. There is no longer a value below which a parcel enters the US duty-free. What this means in practice:
After the Council gave its final approval in February 2026, the EU's €150 customs duty exemption was removed on 1 July 2026. In its place sits a transitional flat duty:
Note that import VAT is separate and was never covered by this exemption. The EU removed the €22 VAT relief back in 2021, so VAT has applied to commercial parcels at any value since then.
The UK is the outlier — for now. The £135 customs relief still applies through 2026. Below that value, no customs duty is charged and UK VAT is collected by the seller at checkout rather than at the border.
However, the Chancellor confirmed at the November 2025 Budget that the £135 threshold will be abolished. The change is in consultation, with full removal expected by 2029 as HMRC's new control systems come online. If you ship regularly to the UK, treat the current relief as a closing window rather than a permanent feature.
Here is the part almost nobody explains clearly, because the answer depends entirely on where your parcel is going:
Your destination country's import rules apply, and for the US those rules changed fundamentally. Assume duty on everything, budget for it before you buy, and make sure your declaration is accurate and specific. The days of hoping a $200 parcel slides through untouched are over.
This is the quiet good news, and it is worth understanding properly. The new €3 duty applies to goods entering the EU from outside it. A parcel travelling from a German warehouse to Spain, France or the Netherlands never crosses an external EU border — it is an intra-EU movement. That means:
In other words: while parcels from outside the EU just got more expensive and slower, buying from German stores and shipping within Europe got relatively cheaper overnight. If you are an EU resident who used to order from overseas marketplaces, the maths has genuinely shifted in favour of shopping European.
Consolidation always saved on weight and volume. Under the new rules it does something extra: it reduces the number of customs events. Ten separate parcels means ten declarations, ten clearance fees and ten chances for a broker handling charge. One consolidated box means one.
Our Combine & Repack service merges your orders from different German stores into a single box, strips the bulky retail packaging, and can cut billable shipping weight substantially. In a world where every parcel is a taxable event, sending fewer, fuller parcels is the highest-leverage thing you can do.
It is tempting to under-declare. Don't. Customs systems increasingly score declarations on completeness, accuracy and consistency, and a mismatch triggers inspection, storage fees and delays that dwarf whatever you hoped to save — on top of the legal risk.
There is also a practical reason to be precise: because duty depends on classification, a correctly classified item is often charged less than a carelessly described one that gets swept into a higher-rate category. When you complete your shipping request with us, describe each item specifically. Our team helps you get the paperwork right.
Fixed per-parcel and per-tariff-line costs reward planning. Since base shipping and clearance costs barely change between a small box and a full one, batching a month of purchases into one shipment spreads those fixed costs across far more value. Impulse-ordering one item at a time is now the most expensive way to shop internationally.
The duty-free era is over, and no amount of clever routing brings it back. What still works is the unglamorous stuff: fewer parcels, accurate paperwork, and a German address that lets you buy at local retail prices from stores that would otherwise refuse to ship to you.
Get your free German address, shop dm, Rossmann, Amazon.de, Zalando or any German retailer at local prices, and let us consolidate and clear your shipment properly. Check current pricing on our shipping rates page, or read our route-specific guides for Germany to the USA and Germany to the UK.
Yes. It was removed on 1 July 2026 after final Council approval in February 2026. Goods under €150 entering the EU now attract a flat €3 duty per tariff line until the permanent system arrives around mid-2028.
Only if your parcel is entering the EU from outside it. If you live in the EU and we ship from our German warehouse to you, the movement is intra-EU — no customs duty, no €3 charge, no import VAT at the border.
Assume yes. Since 29 August 2025 the US has had no de minimis threshold, so parcels are assessed duties, taxes and fees regardless of value, based on the item's HTSUS classification.
Yes, through 2026. Its abolition was confirmed at the November 2025 Budget and is expected to complete by 2029.
It reduces the number of declarations, clearance fees and handling charges, and lowers billable weight. It does not change the duty rate on the goods themselves. Note that in the EU the €3 applies per tariff line, so consolidating items of the same type is especially efficient.
Be cautious of anyone promising this automatically. Germany's tourist VAT refund scheme requires goods to leave the EU in your personal luggage — items sent by post or a forwarding agent explicitly do not qualify. VAT-free treatment on forwarded goods is only possible where the retailer itself invoices the sale as a commercial export, which most consumer stores will not do. Ask our team before you assume a refund applies.