This one has had almost no coverage aimed at sellers, and the coverage that exists is written for importers with brokers on retainer. So instead of summarising the rule, this guide walks the decision the way it actually falls out: six questions, in order, each with the consequence attached. Work down them once for a typical parcel of yours and you will know where you stand.
The rule is an interim final rule published at 91 FR 37801 on 24 June 2026. It amends 19 CFR Part 145 — the part governing mail importations — and it took effect on 24 July 2026. Comments were open until the same date, which means this is settled enough to comply with and open enough to change.
Is it going by post, or by courier?
This is the fork that decides everything else, and it is about the network, not the speed. Post means a foreign postal operator hands off to USPS. Courier means DHL, FedEx, UPS or similar, moving it end to end on their own account.
Is the shipment $2,500 or less?
The $2,500 figure is not new and it is not specific to this rule. It is the long-standing ceiling for informal entry under 19 U.S.C. 1498 and 19 CFR 143.21 — the lighter-touch entry procedure that exists so that small consignments do not need the full formal apparatus. What is new is that postal parcels now have to use it, rather than being waved through under the $800 de minimis exemption.
Two footnotes worth knowing. CBP may require formal entry of any mail shipment regardless of value where necessary to protect the revenue. And separate parcels each under the threshold cannot be added together to force formal entry — unless there was a splitting of shipments in order to avoid duty. Deliberately breaking one order into three boxes to stay under a number is the specific thing that provision exists to catch.
Is what you are sending eligible for the informal route?
Being under the value ceiling is not enough. The process is available only to merchandise classifiable in HTSUS chapters 1–97 — the ordinary goods chapters. Anything falling into the following is excluded and must use formal entry instead:
- goods subject to quota, or to antidumping or countervailing duty orders;
- goods carrying duties under HTSUS chapters 98 or 99;
- goods with import or entry-related Partner Government Agency requirements — the FDA, USDA, FCC and similar;
- goods for which duty-free treatment is claimed under chapter 98 or under a free trade agreement.
Who is going to file it?
This is where most sellers discover the rule is not really about paperwork. Filing is restricted to parties with the right to make entry under 19 CFR 143.26(a): the owner or purchaser of the merchandise, or a licensed customs broker designated by the owner, purchaser or consignee.
You, the overseas seller, are generally not the owner or purchaser once the goods are sold. Your US buyer is — which is why the USPS notice to mailers puts it the way it does:
“Customers mailing goods to the customs territory of the United States are responsible for ensuring that all required information and duties are properly and timely submitted to CBP by an eligible party.”
USPS PostalPro industry alert, 25 July 2026Read that carefully. The duty is not to file; it is to ensure someone eligible files. That is a procurement problem, not a form-filling problem. Realistically it means engaging a broker who will act on the designation of the consignee, or working through a marketplace or shipping platform that has already built the arrangement. Sending a parcel and hoping is no longer a strategy that ends with the parcel arriving.
Is there a bond behind it?
A new section, 19 CFR 145.15, ties release to security. Its language is unusually blunt for a customs regulation, and it is the sentence to remember out of this entire rule:
“Each shipment valued at $2,500 or less which is to be delivered by the United States Postal Service, pursuant to § 145.12(b), will not be released from CBP custody unless a single transaction or continuous bond containing or meeting the bond conditions set forth in § 113.62 of this chapter has been transmitted to CBP …”
19 CFR 145.15, added by CBP Dec. 26-13, effective 24 July 2026It can be a single transaction bond or a continuous one, so a very occasional shipper is not forced into an annual instrument. But there must be one, and it must be on file before the goods need releasing, not after. This is normally the point at which a seller concludes that a broker relationship is cheaper than the alternative.
What actually gets sent, and by when?
Fourteen data elements per shipment, transmitted to CBP by email as a spreadsheet, with payment made separately through Pay.gov. Both are due no later than the 7th day of the month following the month the package arrived. The elements are: filer code; bond number; description of merchandise; country of origin; all applicable 10-digit HTSUS classifications; quantity or weight (only where a specific duty rate is used); duty rate; value; total duty owed; carrier; flight or conveyance number; tracking number generated by the foreign post; arrival port; and arrival date.
The 10-digit HTSUS classification is the item most likely to be wrong. A six-digit code from a shipping label is not a 10-digit HTSUS number, and the duty owed is calculated from it. Getting the classification right stopped being a customs formality when the amount became something a filer has to compute and remit rather than something a border officer works out on arrival.
What a compliant month looks like
Because the deadline is monthly rather than per-parcel, the rhythm is easier to see on a calendar than in prose. For a parcel that lands in the US on 15 April:
- Before dispatchBond on file, and an eligible filer lined up. Neither can be arranged retroactively once the parcel is sitting in customs custody.
- 15 AprilParcel arrives. Duty rate is fixed by the rate in effect when the entry is completed — and the entry is completed when it is properly transmitted, not when the parcel landed.
- By 7 MaySpreadsheet emailed to CBP and payment made via Pay.gov. Both, not either.
- After 7 MayLate payment attracts interest under 19 CFR 24.3a.
Under the old system, a mail parcel with incomplete paperwork was not a disaster: a CBP officer prepared the entry form by hand and the carrier collected the duty from the addressee on delivery. The rule expressly removes both. CBP officers will no longer manually prepare entry forms for these shipments, and duties will not be collected on delivery. There is no longer a person at the end of the chain who sorts it out. That is the single most consequential sentence in the rule for a small seller, and it is buried in the preamble rather than the regulation.
Three dates that are being conflated everywhere
Almost every summary of this treats it as one change on one day. It is three changes on three days, and mixing them up produces advice that is wrong by a month or more.
24 June 2026 — the de minimis suspension itself became regulation. The new 19 CFR 145.31(b) suspends the $800 exemption for merchandise arriving through the international postal network, and the parallel rule for every other mode took effect the same day. If you read that a rule took effect in June, this is the one.
24 July 2026 — the new postal informal entry process, everything described above. This is the date that changes what you have to do.
22 September 2026 — a voluntary CBP test of a new electronic filing route, informal entry type 13, filed in ACE rather than by emailed spreadsheet. Worth knowing about because, unlike the manual process, the test does accept chapter 98 and 99 goods, FTA claims and PGA merchandise. It is a test, not a replacement, and participation is optional.
If you priced around the flat per-package duty, reprice
There was a transitional arrangement, and a lot of 2025 pricing advice was built on it. Executive Order 14324 let carriers choose a flat specific duty per postal item instead of an ad valorem calculation: $80, $160 or $200 per item depending on the origin country's tariff band. That option is gone. It was struck by Executive Order 14388 in February 2026, and independently it was only ever available for six months from 29 August 2025. If a spreadsheet of yours still contains an $80 line, it is describing a regime that ended some months ago.
What replaces it is ordinary duty at your commodity code, computed by whoever files, plus whatever surcharge regime is current — which has itself been unstable this year. Our US landed cost calculator is the quickest way to see what a given code and value does to your margin once duty is a real per-parcel number rather than a rounding error, and the pricing mechanics of collecting it up front are covered separately in pricing for the US after DDP became mandatory.
The underlying $800 exemption, for the avoidance of doubt, is not coming back. It has been suspended since 29 August 2025, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act terminates it by statute from 1 July 2027.
Two things this rule does not answer
What physically happens to a stuck parcel. The regulation says it will not be released from CBP custody. It does not say whether it is eventually returned to origin, exported, or treated as abandoned, and we could not find that answered in the rule text. Plan on the assumption that you do not get the goods back and cannot predict the timeline.
Who the importer of record is. The rule identifies the party who must file, hold the bond and pay. It does not expressly designate the US addressee, the foreign seller or the postal operator as importer of record for these shipments. If you are structuring something around that question, it needs a proper answer from a broker rather than an inference from the text.
Gift and personal-exemption provisions are unchanged, incidentally — a bona fide gift up to $100 can still be claimed — but it must be declared on the worksheet rather than assumed.
If you also sell into Europe, the same pattern is playing out there with a different mechanism: rather than requiring an entry, the EU is requiring marketplaces to check your registrations before you can list at all, which we cover in the EU packaging EPR marketplace check. Both are the same underlying move — the end of low-value cross-border parcels being administratively invisible.
Facts verified 2026-07-26 against the sources below. This is a summary for sellers, not legal or customs advice.
Primary sources: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments and New Postal Informal Entry Process, interim final rule, 91 FR 37801 (CBP Dec. 26-13, docket USCBP-2026-0761, RIN 1685-AA45), published 24 June 2026, effective 24 July 2026 — source for 19 CFR 145.12, 145.15 and 145.31, the $2,500 and chapter 1–97 eligibility limits, the fourteen data elements, the Pay.gov deadline and the removal of manual entry preparation and collection on delivery; CBP, 91 FR 37789 (non-postal modes, effective 24 June 2026); CBP, 91 FR 38007 (entry type 13 test, commencing 22 September 2026); 19 CFR 143.21 and 143.26 for the informal entry ceiling and who may make entry; Executive Order 14324 (90 FR 37775) for the de minimis suspension from 29 August 2025 and the $80/$160/$200 transitional option, and Executive Order 14388 (91 FR 9433) striking it; USPS PostalPro industry alert of 25 July 2026; CBP's e-commerce FAQs. Points we could not confirm on a primary source are flagged as unanswered in the text rather than filled in.