The EU Killed the €150 Duty-Free Exemption. Here's What You Owe Now.

If you're an e-commerce reseller ordering dozens or hundreds of small parcels from China, you've probably never had to think about customs duty on an individual order — parcels under €150 were simply exempt. As of 1 July 2026, that's no longer true, and if your costing hasn't caught up, it's already eating into every order you've shipped since.

What Actually Changed

For years, any parcel valued at €150 or under, shipped from outside the EU to an EU consumer, paid VAT but no customs duty. On 13 November 2025, EU member states reached political agreement to abolish that exemption, and on 12 December 2025 the Council confirmed a transitional flat-rate duty to bridge the gap until the EU's permanent Customs Data Hub arrives, currently targeted for 2028. That transitional duty took effect on 1 July 2026, and it applies to essentially all IOSS-registered e-commerce sellers — which covers roughly 93% of e-commerce parcel flows into the EU today.

What It Actually Costs

This is the detail that trips people up: it isn't a percentage of the item's value. It's a flat €3 charged per distinct item category (technically, per tariff line) in the shipment — not per parcel.

That distinction matters a lot at volume:

• A parcel containing one product type: €3 in duty, regardless of whether that item is worth €10 or €140.
• A parcel containing two different product types: €6 in duty (€3 × 2), not a flat €3 for the whole box.
• IOSS VAT still applies on top, at the destination country's standard rate, exactly as it did before.

If you're used to thinking about cost as a percentage of order value, this flat structure changes your math in the opposite direction than you'd expect: it hits your cheapest items hardest as a share of value, and barely registers on your priciest sub-€150 items.

The Escape Hatch That's Actually a Trap

Any parcel genuinely valued over €150 doesn't get the flat-fee treatment at all — it needs a full standard customs calculation instead, with duty based on its actual tariff rate. Run it through the flat-fee logic by mistake, and you'll dramatically under-charge yourself for that order.

There's Already a Second Fee Coming

Here's the part most guides on this topic leave out: the €3 duty is not the final cost. A separate, EU-wide "handling fee" — intended to cover customs authorities' processing costs — is expected to take effect around November 2026, on the same per-item-category basis. Its exact amount hasn't been officially confirmed yet, though based on national handling fees some member states already introduced on their own (Italy and Romania since January 2026, France since March 2026), industry estimates cluster around an additional €2 per item category — which would bring the combined charge to roughly €5 per item category once both measures are live. Whether you source from one supplier or many, this is worth tracking rather than assuming today's €3 is the finished number.

Why This Compounds Fast at Scale

None of this is a large number on a single parcel. But if you're moving hundreds of parcels a month, each with two or three distinct product types, a costing method that's off by even a few euros per parcel compounds into a real hit to margin — one that's easy to miss because no single order looks alarming on its own.

How Tradeklar Handles This

Because this is a genuinely different calculation — and a genuinely different persona — from a single bulk wholesale order, Tradeklar treats it as its own mode rather than bolting it onto the standard calculator:

• A dedicated low-value parcel mode, separate from the standard landed cost calculator, built specifically for this per-parcel, flat-fee logic.
• Batch calculation via spreadsheet upload, so you can run duty for an entire shipment of mixed product types at once instead of one parcel at a time.
• Automatic per-item-category duty stacking — correctly charging €3 per distinct item type in a batch, not a flat €3 for the whole shipment.
• Automatic flagging of any parcel that's actually over €150, so it's routed to a full calculation instead of silently under-costed.
• A direct question about your IOSS registration status, since that determines who's actually responsible for collecting VAT on a given order.

(Suggested visual: a before/after graphic — "duty-free" vs. "€3 per item type + IOSS VAT" — on a sample parcel with 2 product types.)

FAQ

Is the EU's €150 customs exemption really gone? As of 1 July 2026, yes — a transitional flat duty now applies to parcels under €150 shipped from outside the EU, replacing the old exemption until a permanent system arrives around 2028.

Is the new EU parcel duty based on the item's value? No. It's a flat €3 per distinct item category in the shipment, not a percentage of value, and not a flat fee per parcel if the parcel contains multiple product types.

What is IOSS and why does it matter for this? IOSS (Import One-Stop Shop) is the EU's VAT collection mechanism for low-value imports. The new flat customs duty applies specifically to consignments where the seller is IOSS-registered, which covers the large majority of e-commerce shipments into the EU.