Duty when shipping to the USA
Posted 29/08/2025
For those of you based in the USA you may already know that the trade relationship between the UK and USA has been changing rapidly. The $800 De Minimis which we has been in place for decades has now been removed, meaning that all goods now arriving into the USA will have duties applied. This is a huge change for small businesses like us sending ecommerce goods to you and we appreciate your patience while we all adjust to it.
For the next 6 months there will be a new 10% duty to pay on goods Made in Scotland. For our retail website customers we have decided to charge this at the point of sale as it saves you any additional admin on the parcel when it arrives on your doorstep.
If you have been shopping with us over the last few years you may have noticed that we have offered only an international courier service like Fedex or UPS. However the new arrangements in place put very high duties on those shipments in addition to large handling fees and they require a level of admin from you that we think is unreasonable. So we are going to wind the clock back a few years and re-introduce the Royal Mail service for all our goods going to the USA. However there will be some downside.
The courier services are fast, ultimately you get what you pay for. We abandoned the Royal Mail service some years ago when their delivery commitments fell to an all time low with some parcels taking as long as 21 days to reach certain states in the USA. Sadly we have to re-introduce this route to keep the shipping cost and complexity low.
As a quick exercise I ran the numbers on our parcels
- A garment posted to USA worth £150 would incur a shipping cost of £30 by our courier and an additional 30% duty and local taxes (£60) plus a disbursement fee of £16. Thats £256 for a £150 sweater.
- However the same parcel via Royal Mail is £150 plus £25 shipping and a duty of only £15 and a disbursement of only £0.50! Thats £190.50 for the same £150 sweater.
So its really no contest.
Sadly this solution is only intended to be in place for 6 months while the USA adjusts its internal procedures to capture duty on both the courier and postal networks.
For anyone not in the USA its business as usual and we hope these international postal disturbances wont trouble you!
We are monitoring the situation and apologise for any disruption. There are some useful links below, but if you have any comments or questions, just ask.
