United States Import Duty & Tariff Calculator

How US import duty and tariffs work

When you import into the United States, what you actually owe at the border is rarely just "the duty rate times the price." It's a stack: a base tariff set by classification, plus any special tariffs layered on top, plus a couple of federal processing fees. Here's how each piece is built, in the order Customs and Border Protection (CBP) applies it.

Customs value: the duty base

US duty is charged on the transaction value of the goods — the price actually paid or payable for the merchandise itself (19 USC 1401a / 19 CFR 152.103). International freight and insurance are excluded from the duty base when they are separately identified on the invoice. In practice this lands close to an FOB figure, but the legal standard is "transaction value," not literally FOB.

This is where your Incoterm matters. EXW or FOB prices are already close to the dutiable value. CFR and CIF bundle freight (and, for CIF, insurance) into the price, so those costs have to be stripped back out to find the customs value. DDP means the seller has already paid the duty on your behalf. Get the value right first — every line below is calculated from it.

Duty rates and stacked tariffs

The base rate comes from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and is set per 10-digit HTS line. There is no single "import duty rate." Many goods — most consumer electronics, a lot of furniture and toys — are duty-free at 0%. Others run higher: apparel and footwear in particular can reach well into the double digits depending on fiber and construction. You have to classify the specific item and read the rate off the HTS.

On top of that base rate, special tariffs stack additively on the same customs value:

• Section 301 — additional tariffs on China-origin goods.
• Section 232 — additional tariffs on steel and aluminum.
• IEEPA — additional tariffs imposed under emergency-powers authority.

These are not alternatives to the base HTS duty — they are added to it. If your base rate is 3% and a 25% Section 301 tariff applies, your goods are dutiable at 28% of the customs value, not 25%. These rates change frequently and depend on both the HTS code and the country of origin, so this calculator takes them as a separate field you enter rather than guessing them for you. Always confirm the current rate against your HTS line and origin before you rely on a number.

No federal VAT or GST

The United States has no federal VAT or GST. Unlike almost every other major market, there is no import-stage consumption tax line at all. State and local sales and use tax is a separate, post-importation liability owed to the destination state — CBP does not collect it at the border. So when you model a US landed cost, there is simply no VAT/GST line to add. Don't import an assumption from other countries' rules here.

The $800 de minimis is suspended

This is the single fact most likely to trip up an importer working from older guidance. The US$800 Section 321 de minimis — the rule that let low-value parcels enter duty-free — is suspended for all countries under Executive Order 14324, effective 29 August 2025 (China and Hong Kong ended earlier, on 2 May 2025). Duty now applies from the first dollar.

Do not treat $800 as a current exemption. A $40 parcel is dutiable today. There is an interim per-item postal duty option operating during the transition window, and the de minimis is set to be permanently repealed by statute effective 1 July 2027 — but the working assumption right now is simple: small shipments are no longer free.

Fees

Two federal fees sit on top of duty, both calculated from the customs value:

• Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF). For formal entries (customs value over $2,500), MPF is 0.3464% of the customs value, with a minimum of $33.58 and a maximum of $651.50 (FY2026 figures). For informal entries ($2,500 or less), MPF is a small flat fee — the percentage and the $33.58 floor do not apply to small parcels. This distinction matters a lot on low-value shipments.
• Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF). 0.125% of the customs value, charged on ocean shipments only — never on air freight — with no cap.

Customs broker fees are private third-party charges, not government fees; enter those as an estimate. Add it all up — customs value, freight, insurance, duty (base plus stacked tariffs), MPF, HMF (ocean only), and brokerage — and you have your true landed cost.

Incoterms: what your supplier price already includes

The Incoterm on your invoice is shorthand for who pays for what — and, just as important, what is already baked into the number your supplier quoted. Get this wrong and you'll either double-count freight or forget to budget for it entirely. Here's what each common term means for your landed cost, and how the US duty base treats it.

EXW (Ex Works). The price is the goods sitting on the supplier's loading dock — nothing else. You're on the hook for export clearance, origin haulage, the main international freight, insurance, and everything at the US end. The quote looks cheapest but adds the most downstream.

FOB / FCA (Free On Board / Free Carrier). The supplier delivers the goods loaded and cleared for export at the named origin point. Origin-side costs are in; the ocean or air freight, insurance, and US-side charges are still yours to add. This is the most common term for container and LCL ocean shipments.

CFR (Cost and Freight). The international freight to the US port is included in the price; marine insurance is not. Add insurance plus everything from the port onward.

CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight). Freight and insurance to the US port are in the quoted price. You add only the US-side charges from arrival forward.

DDP (Delivered Duty Paid). The seller has paid the US duty, fees, and delivery to your door. There's nothing further to add — but confirm in writing that "duty paid" actually covers any stacked Section 301/232/IEEPA tariffs, because those are where DDP quotes quietly fall short.

The US duty-base point

Whatever the Incoterm, US Customs charges duty on the transaction value — the price actually paid for the goods — with international freight and insurance excluded when they're separately identified. So if you're importing on CFR or CIF, strip the freight (and, for CIF, the insurance) back out to get the duty base. Don't let a freight-inclusive Incoterm inflate the value you calculate duty on.

One more US-specific wrinkle: the Harbor Maintenance Fee (0.125% of customs value) applies to ocean shipments only. Air freight is exempt — so include HMF only when your goods arrive by sea.

Worked example: USD 5,000 shipment

Here's a typical ocean import worked end to end. The goods are priced at USD 5,000 FOB, with USD 600 international ocean freight and USD 50 insurance shown separately on the invoice. Assume a 3% base HTS duty plus a 25% Section 301 tariff on the China-origin goods, and a USD 150 customs broker fee.

Step 1 — Customs value. Because freight and insurance are separately identified, they come out of the duty base. The transaction value is just the price paid for the goods: USD 5,000. The $600 freight and $50 insurance are real landed-cost dollars, but they aren't dutiable here.

Step 2 — Duty. The base rate and the Section 301 rate stack additively on the same $5,000: 3% + 25% = 28%. Duty = 28% × 5,000 = USD 1,400. The special tariff is doing most of the damage — the base duty alone would have been only $150.

Step 3 — Fees. This is a formal entry (value over $2,500), so the MPF is 0.3464% of $5,000 = $17.32 — below the $33.58 floor, so you pay the floor. Because it moved by ocean, the HMF applies: 0.125% × 5,000 = USD 6.25. (Air shipments skip the HMF entirely.) There is no federal VAT or GST line — the US doesn't have one.

Line	Amount (USD)
Goods (customs value)	5,000.00
International freight	600.00
Insurance	50.00
Duty (28% × 5,000)	1,400.00
MPF (formal floor)	33.58
HMF (ocean, 0.125%)	6.25
Customs broker fee	150.00
Total landed cost	7,239.83

Duty plus fees come to about 31.8% of the goods value — and almost all of that is the stacked 301 tariff, not the 3% base rate. That's the number worth checking before you commit to a supplier.