TL;DR I didn't make it in time. Fuck you Trump!
Edit: For those asking, this was https://www.irvwpc.com/ Please support them if you can.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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Is the USPS even equipped to collect customs fees? As USian I’ve never paid an import fee as an end consumer ever in my entire life. All of this is so stupid.
The CBP collect import taxes. You never had to pay it because there was a longstanding rule called "De Minimis" which exempted all items under $800 from import taxes. the 2nd trump administration overturned the De Minimis rule (does not require congress AFIAK).
Usually, if you buy from a US reseller, you don't pay it directly, but if you order directly from outside of the country, it goes through customs and you'll have to pay it.
I can understand why they'd want to get rid of this... It was very generous and often meant that buying goods from an overseas supplier was cheaper than buying the exact same items from a US-based supplier. For example, I've bought MikroTik hardware from a Latvian supplier (Getic) because it ended up noticeably cheaper than buying from a US store, even after shipping.
Most countries have duty-free thresholds that are much lower, around the equivalent of $50-100 before taxes and duties are applied. The US limit used to be $200 until 2016.
protectionism doesn't work tho
I agree, and don't think there should be any tariffs.
Having said that, a US store that has to pay sales tax is never going to win over a foreign store that doesn't have to pay sales tax. Even after shipping, the exact same product will likely be cheaper to buy from the European store.
If you buy something from Europe under the de minimis exception, there's no tax applied at all. European countries/companies usually don't tax buyers from outside the EU, and the US doesn't tax it either.
Applying the same tax for both US and international purchases makes sense IMO. This is what Australia does: The sales tax rate is 10% across the whole country, and foreign stores that sell to Australians have to collect 10% tax and send it to the Australian government. Collecting taxes at the point of payment, even for foreign stores, avoids customers having to pay taxes separately when the package arrives in the country.
This is probably why the EU itself recently changed the rules and VAT (the EU's version of Sales Tax) is payable on all purchases from outside the EU, no matter how small the value, but import tax remains only payable on purchases above €150.
They also set up a system so that non-EU retail sellers can collect VAT directly on payment - just like EU ones do - so for example a buyer from the EU buying stuff via AliExpress will have the VAT added to the price during checkout.
That's what Australia does too. Since the sellers already had their systems set up to handle it for Australia, it was probably easy for them to extend it to be used for the EU too.
In Germany the threshold is around 200 Euro, more precisely up to an import VAT of 10 Euros, where the state can't even be bothered with the paperwork. 150 for import duties, though that doesn't apply to alcohol, tobacco and perfume, unless everything is under 45 Euros and both sender and recipient are natural persons and no money has been exchanged.
You don't want to completely abolish thresholds as you don't want to spend more money on collecting taxes and duties than you collect. The general strategy of the financial police seems to be to make paying duties as inconvenient for private citizens as possible, they'll hold back the parcel and you have to go to them, probably a couple of towns over, and fetch it in person. The smart thing to do when buying from alibaba or such is to choose shipping from a EU warehouse as then all the import stuff has been dealt with by the seller.
We still do have duties within the single market, btw, because different taxes on alcohol, tobacco, etc. Relevant mostly for ølvikingar.