As agreed in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it had raised the value of a shipment of merchandise imported by a single person on one day – that generally may be imported free from duties and taxes – from USD 200 to USD 800, e-commercefacts.com reports.
The new regulation opens the way for a wider range of coss-border export items into the US. Previously, most items valued over USD 200 had duties rates ranging from 0% to 37.5%, with the average duty rate being 5.63%. With US cross-border shoppers used to paying the extra tax, the increase in the duty-free limit is expected to cause the sales of high quality brands to increase. Moreover, cross-border packages with values under USD 800 no longer require formal customs processing in many cases, thereby making deliveries to the US quicker as well as cheaper.
However, some US retailers have already objected to the new duty threshold. Forbes reports US bicycle shops have initially gone on the defensive since it makes imports on a par with US prices. On the other hand, the US government is likely to see a decrease in revenue from imports. In 2015, US Customs and Border Protection processed more than USD 2.4 trillion in trade and approximately 33 million imports. The agency also collected about USD 46 billion in duties, taxes and other fees — the most collected since 2012.
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