Duty starts when postage lands on the invoice

Assessed figure: goods, postage and anything else on the invoice

The clause that decides most border bills is short: the figure the border assesses is not the value of the goods alone. It is the goods, plus the cost of getting them there, plus anything else that forms part of the price paid for the consignment. On this desk that combined figure is called the landed value, and it is the number every threshold in the band table is compared against.

The practical consequence is that the freight line on a transport invoice is not a separate matter from the customs line. It is an input to it. A consignment of goods valued below a relief line can end up above that line once postage is added, and the border then assesses duty on the whole amount rather than on the excess.

Two smaller items belong in the same figure when they form part of the price. Insurance taken out on the shipment is normally part of the value, and so is any charge that is baked into the price paid for the goods rather than being a separate service. Where a border authority issues a notice about a specific consignment, that notice governs what is included, and nothing on this desk overrides it.

Border arithmetic worked on a 700-unit consignment

Take a consignment of goods at 700 units sent to the United States with postage of 110. The relief line there is 800 for both duty and tax. Goods alone sit 100 under it. Goods plus postage come to 810, which is 10 over, and that is enough to move the consignment from no assessment to an assessment on the full 810.

On the footwear band for that destination the rate runs from zero to 48 percent, so the duty on 810 lands somewhere between nothing and 388.80 depending on the fibre and construction of the item. The tax line stays empty on that destination because the band carries no national rate: the desk leaves that field for the reader to fill with the rate that actually applies where they are.

Now run the same arithmetic on the New Zealand band, which assesses both duty and tax on the landed value including international postage. Goods of 900 with postage of 150 come to 1,050 against a relief line of 1,000. Duty at 10 percent is 105, and goods and services tax at 15 percent is charged on 1,155, which is 173.25. The postage line of 150 did not add 150 to the bill; it switched on 278.25 of duty and tax that would not otherwise have existed.

The two worked cases also show why an identical goods value produces different bills at different destinations. The United States case produced no tax line at all, because that band carries no national rate, while the New Zealand case produced duty and tax together on a consignment that crossed the line by 50. The arithmetic is the same in both; the difference sits in the band rather than in the parcel.

The postage line is the one people leave out

Estimates made before a parcel ships usually contain the goods value and the transport figure in separate places, and the two are never added together. That separation is the single most common reason an estimate and an assessment disagree, and it produces a specific kind of surprise: a bill that arrives for a consignment the reader believed was under the threshold.

There is a second version of the same mistake, which is leaving out the processing charge a courier adds when it advances duty on the reader behalf. That charge is not part of the assessed value in most descriptions, but it does appear on the invoice next to it, and readers often read the total as though the border had charged it.

The correction is mechanical. Before comparing anything against a relief line, add the goods value and the postage figure together and write the sum down. If the sum is within a small margin of a threshold, treat the consignment as though it will be assessed, because the margin between an estimate and a final invoice is rarely zero.

Thresholds that postage alone can cross

The slip below runs the arithmetic across all eight bands with goods values chosen to sit just under each relief line. In seven of the eight cases the postage line alone is what pushes the consignment over, by margins between 5 and 200 units depending on the band.

Australia is the exception in a different way and it is worth reading carefully. Its duty line sits at 1,000, so a 690 consignment does not attract duty, but its tax line starts at zero, so goods and services tax applies from the first unit of value on most imported goods. On that destination the question is not whether a threshold was crossed but which of the two lines is in play.

Australia, where the duty line and the tax line start apart

Across the eight bands, seven destinations carry the same figure for the duty line and the tax line. Australia is the only one where the two start at different points: duty at 1,000 and goods and services tax at zero, with the tax charged from the first unit of value on most imported goods.

That asymmetry changes what a reader is arguing about. On the other seven destinations, a consignment under the relief line produces no border bill at all, and a consignment over it produces both lines together. On Australia, a low-value consignment can produce a tax line and no duty line, which looks like an error to anyone who has only seen the other seven.

The band note for that destination records the second feature as well: the rate range for clothing and footwear is the narrowest in the set at 5 to 10 percent across every category, against a footwear range that reaches 48 percent elsewhere. A narrow band is easier to plan against, and it is the reason an Australian estimate can be built with far less uncertainty than a United States one.

Actions that change the assessed figure before the parcel ships

Three actions move the assessed figure, and two of them are about accuracy rather than reduction. The first is deciding the declared value deliberately rather than copying the order total: the figure should be defensible against the goods and the postage, and the arithmetic behind it should be written down and kept.

The second is describing the item in words that let the correct band follow from the description. On a destination whose footwear band spans 48 percentage points, the words on the label decide which end of that range applies, and a model code decides nothing. Where an item genuinely falls between categories, saying so plainly is better than choosing the category with the lower rate and hoping.

The third is the one that reduces rather than clarifies: fewer and smaller consignments move the postage line, and postage is part of the assessed value. Splitting a consignment also multiplies the number of assessments, so on a destination with a low relief line the split can cost more than it saves. The right answer depends on the destination band, which is why the band table carries a separate line for each one.

One action is worth avoiding altogether: writing a value lower than the real one to stay under a relief line. It changes the arithmetic without changing the risk, and it replaces a figure that can be defended with one that collapses the moment the transport invoice is compared against the declaration. The same money is better spent on a smaller consignment, which lowers the assessed value honestly.

Records that make the assessment checkable afterwards

An assessment that cannot be checked is a demand, and the difference is entirely in the paperwork kept beforehand. Four documents cover it: the transport invoice showing postage as a separate line, the declared value as it was written on the shipment, the band reading for the destination with its checked date, and the warehouse weight slip if the assessment refers to weight.

With those four in one place, the arithmetic can be rebuilt in a couple of minutes: goods plus postage plus anything else, compared against the relief line, multiplied by the band for the category. Where the rebuilt figure differs from the assessment, the difference is usually one of three things, a postage line that was omitted, a category that was read differently, or a currency conversion at a rate the reader did not expect.

Keep the rebuild even when the figures agree. A note recording what was assessed, on what basis, and on what date is the only thing that makes the next consignment to the same destination predictable rather than hopeful.

The data point behind this note

Basis: eight destination bands re-read as ranges with their own checked date of 2026-09-18; in seven of the eight the duty line and the tax line start at the same figure, and Australia is the only band where duty starts at 1,000 while tax starts at zero (KB-2026-09).

◇KB-2026-09· 2026-09-30 Batch ledger · Challenge a figure

Notes in the same cluster

Related entries and gauges

• How is duty assessed when postage is added to the price?
• What joins the declared value, and what does not?
• Border cost bench

  Duty and tax assessed on the landed value, as a band.