Now that de minimis is gone, who pays the duty, me or the customer?
Who pays the duty after de minimis ends is a choice you make through the Incoterm. DDP means you absorb it, DAP means the customer pays at the door. Both costed on a $48 wallet.
Last updated: June 27, 2026
Who pays the duty after de minimis ends is something you decide, not something the law decides for you. The importer of record legally owes the duty, and you pick who that is through your Incoterm. Ship DDP and you pay it, taking the margin hit. Ship DAP and the customer pays it at the door.
Now that the US $800 de minimis threshold is gone, every cross-border parcel into the United States owes normal duty, and that duty has to land on someone. The question is not whether the charge exists. The question is which side of the transaction carries it, and that is a margin-versus-customer-experience tradeoff you control, not an unavoidable surprise. This post answers who pays, shows the duty math on a real product, and costs both paths to the last dollar.
Who pays the duty after de minimis, in one line
Whoever is named importer of record pays the duty after de minimis, and you choose that party through your shipping term. Under DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) you, the seller, are the importer of record and the duty hits your margin. Under DAP (Delivered at Place) the customer is the importer of record and the carrier collects the duty from them at delivery. The duty is the same dollar amount either way. Only the payer changes.
What changed: de minimis ended and the duty came back
De minimis ending means parcels under $800 that used to enter the United States duty-free now owe normal duties. The US $800 Section 321 de minimis threshold is suspended: it ended for China and Hong Kong on May 2, 2025 and for all countries on August 29, 2025 under Executive Order 14324, U.S. Customs and Border Protection made the suspension indefinite in interim final rules published June 24, 2026, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act permanently repeals de minimis for commercial shipments effective July 1, 2027. Formerly de-minimis parcels now owe normal duties, paid by the importer or consignee and usually collected by the carrier or broker, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
One legal note keeps the rate math honest. The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA reciprocal tariffs on February 20, 2026, so CBP re-grounded the de minimis suspension in the Tariff Act of 1930, while Section 232 metals tariffs and Section 301 China tariffs remain in effect. The duty did not go away when the reciprocal tariffs did. Normal most-favored-nation (MFN) duty under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule still applies to every parcel that used to clear free.
How the duty number is built
US customs duty equals the HTS rate times the customs value, where customs value is the transaction value on an FOB basis, meaning what you actually paid the factory, excluding freight and insurance. Find the product's HTS code, read its ad valorem rate, and multiply. Then add the Merchandise Processing Fee, a flat $2.69 on an automated informal entry in FY2026, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
That two-part structure, duty plus MPF, is the whole import charge on a low-value parcel. Nothing about it depends on who pays. The Incoterm only decides whose account it comes out of.
Worked example: a $48 bifold leather wallet shipped into the US
Take a bifold leather wallet that sells for $48, with a landed cost of $19 before duty and a declared customs value of $24 on the factory invoice. Here is the import charge, computed at a representative US MFN ad valorem rate of 8 percent for the wallet (HTS heading 4202.31.60 per the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule 2026). Confirm the exact HTS code for your specific product, since the rate is what moves this math most.
- Customs value (FOB factory): $24.00
- Ad valorem duty (8% of $24.00): $1.92
- Merchandise Processing Fee (flat, automated informal entry, FY2026): $2.69
- Total import charge: $1.92 + $2.69 = $4.61
That $4.61 is the entire new cost de minimis used to erase. The only open question is who pays it.
Path A: ship DDP, you pay the $4.61
Under DDP you are the importer of record, you display the wallet at $48 all-in, and you absorb the import charge before the parcel ships.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue collected | $48.00 |
| Landed cost before duty | -$19.00 |
| Payment fee (2.9% + $0.30 on $48) | -$1.69 |
| Import charge (duty $1.92 + MPF $2.69) | -$4.61 |
| Dollars left under DDP | $22.70 |
The customer pays nothing at the door and gets a clean delivery. You eat the $4.61.
Path B: ship DAP, the customer pays the $4.61
Under DAP the customer is the importer of record, you ship at $48, and the carrier collects the $4.61 from them on delivery. The charge never touches your P&L.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue collected | $48.00 |
| Landed cost before duty | -$19.00 |
| Payment fee (2.9% + $0.30 on $48) | -$1.69 |
| Import charge | paid by customer |
| Dollars left under DAP | $27.31 |
The number: the $4.61 import charge is the entire gap
Set the two paths side by side. DDP leaves $22.70 per wallet. DAP leaves $27.31. The difference is $27.31 minus $22.70, which is exactly $4.61, the same import charge built from $1.92 duty plus $2.69 MPF. That is not a coincidence. The duty is a fixed cost that exists no matter what, so moving it between the two parties shifts margin dollar-for-dollar. Whatever you save on the DDP-to-DAP swing, the customer pays at the door, and the math is symmetric to the cent.
| Path | Who pays duty | Dollars left per wallet |
|---|---|---|
| DDP | You (seller) | $22.70 |
| DAP | Customer | $27.31 |
| Gap | $4.61 |
So the real decision is not whether you can dodge the $4.61. You cannot. The decision is whether you would rather carry $4.61 of margin yourself or hand a surprise bill to a customer who just thought they paid in full.
So who should actually pay, you or the customer?
You should usually pay the duty yourself on a low-value consumer order like this wallet, because the customer-experience cost of a doorstep bill outruns the $4.61 of margin you would save. A buyer who pays $48 at checkout and then gets asked for $4.61 plus, in many cases, a carrier brokerage fee on top reads it as a bait-and-switch. A share of those parcels get refused, and a refused parcel earns you nothing while costing you freight both ways, so DAP often loses money exactly where it looked like it saved some.
The customer should carry the duty when refusals stay low and the buyer expects to clear their own import: B2B and wholesale orders, savvy repeat customers, or low-duty lanes where the door bill is trivial. The cleanest way to make this call by the numbers is to compute your refusal break-even, which is covered in should I ship DDP or DAP. Treat the duty as a margin-versus-experience choice, not an avoidable cost, because the cost is fixed and only its owner is negotiable.
What it costs to skip this decision
Skip the decision and you default into DAP by accident, since shipping without naming yourself importer of record leaves the customer holding the bill. On the wallet that protects $4.61 of margin per order on paper. At 3,000 cross-border orders a year, that looks like $13,830 saved. But every refused parcel reverses it: one refusal on a $48 wallet wipes out the duty savings on roughly a dozen accepted orders once you count outbound freight, return freight, and the non-refundable payment fee. Worse, the cost is invisible on any single clean order, so it survives for months. To put the duty in the cost from the start instead of discovering it later, rebuild your true landed cost per order with the duty line included.
Where Agentis fits
Deciding who pays the duty is a one-time call. Holding the margin once that $4.61 is on your side of the ledger, while promo codes, currency swings, and carrier surcharges keep moving your landed cost, is the ongoing problem, and a month-end report finds the leak weeks too late. A wallet that cleared $22.70 under DDP in January can slip underwater by March when a stacked discount and a freight surcharge land on the same order and nobody recomputes.
Agentis is a real-time profit governance platform for high-volume Shopify Plus and ShopLine merchants. It monitors margin at the order and SKU level and flags or blocks unprofitable activity before it reaches the P&L. Profit governance is the practice of monitoring and enforcing margin rules in real time across every order, SKU, and channel, so unprofitable activity gets caught and corrected as it happens instead of discovered in a month-end report. For the duty decision, that means the order where a DDP wallet drops below its floor gets caught at checkout, not at close. To find the imports already underwater from the new duty, start with finding unprofitable SKUs after tariffs.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays the duty now that de minimis is gone?
The importer of record pays the duty, and you choose who that is through your Incoterm. Ship DDP and you, the seller, pay it and absorb the margin hit. Ship DAP and the customer is the importer of record and pays it to the carrier at delivery. The US $800 de minimis threshold is suspended, so this choice now applies to every cross-border parcel into the US, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
How much is the duty on a low-value parcel?
The duty equals the HTS rate times the FOB customs value, plus the Merchandise Processing Fee. On the $48 wallet with a $24 customs value at a representative 8 percent MFN rate, the duty is $1.92 and the FY2026 MPF on an automated informal entry is a flat $2.69, for a total import charge of $4.61, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the USITC HTS. Confirm your exact HTS code, since the rate drives the number.
Can I avoid the duty by shipping DAP?
No. Shipping DAP does not avoid the duty, it only moves who pays it from you to the customer. The same $4.61 charge exists either way and gets collected at the door under DAP. The real tradeoff is $4.61 of your margin versus a surprise doorstep bill that drives refusals, which is why DAP often costs more than it saves on consumer orders.
Is the IEEPA reciprocal tariff still in effect for this duty?
No. The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA reciprocal tariffs on February 20, 2026, and CBP re-grounded the de minimis suspension in the Tariff Act of 1930. Section 232 metals tariffs and Section 301 China tariffs remain in effect, and normal MFN duty under the HTS still applies, so the duty on a formerly de-minimis parcel is real even though the reciprocal tariffs are not.
When does de minimis end permanently?
De minimis is already suspended now: it ended for China and Hong Kong on May 2, 2025 and for all countries on August 29, 2025, and CBP made the suspension indefinite in interim final rules published June 24, 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act permanently repeals de minimis for commercial shipments effective July 1, 2027, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Next step: pull one cross-border order from this week, find its HTS rate and FOB customs value, compute duty plus the $2.69 MPF, and decide on purpose whether that charge sits on your margin or your customer's doorstep.