EU Import VAT & Low-Value Duty Estimator

How EU parcels got taxed, and what moved on 1 July 2026

Since 2021 the EU has taxed imported parcels from the very first cent — the old twenty-two euro VAT exemption is long gone, and low-value consignments are handled either through the Import One-Stop Shop, where the seller charges VAT at checkout, or by the carrier collecting it on delivery. Most small sellers have made their peace with that. What moved in 2026 was the other half of the bill: customs duty.

• 1 July 2021 The low value consignment relief that let goods worth €22 or less enter VAT-free is abolished. Import VAT becomes due from the first cent, and the Import One-Stop Shop launches so sellers can charge that VAT at checkout and remit it through a single registration instead of leaving it to the carrier.
• 13 November 2025 Member states reach political agreement to scrap the remaining customs-duty relief on low-value consignments, years ahead of the wider customs reform it was originally attached to.
• 11 February 2026 Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 is formally adopted, setting the application date.
• 1 July 2026 — in force now The customs-duty relief is gone. In its place a temporary flat customs duty of €3 applies to consignments with an intrinsic value up to €150, charged per tariff heading rather than per parcel or per unit. Separately, the EU's new Product Identifiers become available on a voluntary basis.
• Autumn 2026 — proposed, not yet applied A Union handling fee covering the customs administration of these parcels has been agreed in principle, but the Commission's own guidance describes both its amount and its date of application as still to be determined, to be fixed by delegated act and applied by member states no later than 1 November 2026. Any specific figure circulating for it is speculation until that act exists — this calculator does not build one in, and neither should your pricing.
• 1 November 2026 EU Product Identifiers become mandatory.
• 1 July 2028 The temporary €3 flat duty ends. From that point low-value consignments face normal tariff rates for their commodity code, which for many product categories will cost more than €3 and will vary by what you sell.

On a €200 order the flat charge is a rounding error. On a €9 pair of earrings it is a serious bite. Sellers whose entire catalogue sits under €20 are the ones who feel it, which is exactly the group least likely to have a customs adviser on call.

The detail that decides your number: the European Commission counts the charge per tariff classification, not per physical unit — in its own words, “per item, based on tariff classification and not quantity”. Five identical t-shirts in one box attract a single €3 charge; three t-shirts and a watch attract €6, because that is two classifications. So the cost driver is not how much you ship but how varied it is: bundling more of the same product costs nothing extra, while a mixed gift set multiplies the charge. Enter how many distinct product types the parcel holds, not how many things are in it. Our guide to the EU's €3 parcel duty works through the mixed-basket examples and the national fees arriving alongside it.

This calculator keeps the two regimes visually separate on purpose, because the mistake that costs money is assuming one set of rules applies to the whole catalogue. Enter the intrinsic goods value and the destination rate, and it shows you which side of €150 you are on, what the taxable base becomes once duty is folded in, what the customer sees at checkout, and what is actually left for you once the pass-through amounts are stripped out.

Two thresholds, both €150 — and only one of them was abolished

This is the single most expensive misreading of the 2026 change, and it is everywhere. Coverage that said “the EU has scrapped the €150 threshold” was describing the customs-duty relief. It was not describing the Import One-Stop Shop, whose own €150 ceiling is a separate rule that has not moved. Both numbers are €150; they do different jobs; only one of them ended.

Read together: a €40 parcel today sits inside the IOSS ceiling and outside any duty relief at the same time. You may collect the VAT at checkout, and the flat duty still applies. Neither fact cancels the other, and a seller who concluded from the headlines that IOSS had been withdrawn would have switched an entire shop to delivered-duty billing for no reason. The worked mixed-basket examples sit in our guide to the EU's €3 parcel duty, which also tracks the national charges arriving alongside it.

Standard VAT rates for eight common destinations

The rate you type into the calculator is the destination country's rate for your kind of product, and it is the number most people get wrong — not by misreading the table, but by reusing their own country's rate for every order. These are the standard rates as of July 2026, none of which changed during 2026, as published by the European Commission's Your Europe service.

Two cautions before you paste one of these into the field above. First, these are standard rates: a great many categories — books, some foodstuffs, certain children's goods, and in several countries printed matter — carry reduced rates that differ country by country, so the standard rate is a ceiling for those products rather than the answer. Second, these eight are common destinations, not the whole union; across all member states the standard rate runs from Luxembourg's 17% to Hungary's 27% as of July 2026. The Commission publishes the complete, current list, and that is the source to check rather than any table on any tool site, including this one.

The practical consequence for pricing is that the same €30 order lands at a different total in Germany than in Sweden, a spread of six percentage points. If you advertise one VAT-inclusive price across the EU, you are absorbing that difference yourself in the higher-rate countries — the same arithmetic our notes on pricing for US DDP work through for the American side of the same problem.

Three ways the VAT reaches the tax authority

The calculator's who pays the duty switch is a simplification of a real choice, and the choice is less about tax than about what happens at your customer's front door. There are three common arrangements and they produce three very different experiences.

1. IOSS — you charge the VAT at checkout

You register for the Import One-Stop Shop, add destination VAT to the order at checkout, and remit it through one monthly return. The parcel arrives with the VAT already settled, so nothing is demanded on delivery and no carrier collection fee attaches to it. This is the smoothest experience a buyer can have, and it is available only up to the €150 IOSS ceiling described above. Non-EU sellers normally need an intermediary established in the EU to operate it, which carries a monthly cost worth weighing against your EU order volume. Many marketplaces already run their own IOSS registration for sales made through their platform — check whether yours does before you register separately, because doing both to the same order is a mess.

2. Delivered-duty-paid — you absorb the charges

You quote a price that already includes the tax and duty, and settle them yourself through your carrier's DDP service. The customer pays one number and is never contacted again, which is the strongest version of the experience, and the cost sits entirely in your margin: the VAT, the duty, and the carrier's own DDP administration charge. Set the calculator's duty switch to I absorb it to see what that does to your net. This is the arrangement to model first if your average order is small, because a €3 flat duty against a €12 sale is a quarter of the goods value before shipping.

3. Letting the carrier bill the buyer on delivery

You ship with nothing prepaid; the carrier clears the parcel, pays the VAT and duty on the customer's behalf, and bills them for it plus a handling fee of the carrier's own choosing. It costs you nothing directly and it is where most refused deliveries, chargebacks and one-star reviews come from — a buyer who paid €18 for a print and is then asked for another €8 by a courier does not experience that as tax policy, they experience it as your shop misleading them. The handling fee is set by the carrier, is often larger than the tax it collects on small parcels, and is not included in this calculator's totals for exactly that reason: nobody can tell you in advance what it will be.

For anything at or above €150 the first option is off the table by definition, and the question narrows to whether you absorb the charges or your customer meets them at the door. The US landed cost calculator is the equivalent exercise for American destinations, where the thresholds and the vocabulary differ but the margin question is identical.

Frequently asked questions