US duty on a parcel from Japan, and who actually pays it

Last checked 9 September 2026. Every claim below links to the document it came from; where nothing official says it, this page says so instead.

The short version

Nobody knocks on your door for it. Since 24 July 2026 the duty on a parcel sent to you through the post is paid before the parcel leaves Japan, by whoever posts it — and for a proxy order, that is the proxy. It reaches you as a line on their invoice, or buried in it.

The old $800 duty-free allowance is gone. It has been suspended for every country since 29 August 2025, and for postal shipments it is now suspended indefinitely by regulation rather than by executive order.

What happens at the Japanese end

Japan Post stopped accepting most US-bound parcels in August 2025 and resumed on 14 April 2026 under conditions it revised again for 24 July 2026. As published in its 14 July 2026 notice:

$100 or less — letters, postcards, printed matter, EMS documents, and person-to-person gifts
Any post office. Nothing prepaid, because this is still duty-free.
$100 or less — anything else, which includes anything bought
Designated post offices only. Duty prepaid before posting, and the label marked DDP.
Over $100, up to $2,500 — everything
Designated post offices only. Duty prepaid before posting, and the label marked DDP.
Over $2,500 — everything
Designated post offices only. No prepayment: it goes through ordinary entry instead.

The prepayment is made by the sender, through an application from a party CBP has approved to collect it. Japan Post's April notice says the only operator it recommends is Zonos, and that Zonos charges its own fee for the service. A parcel declared over ¥200,000 also needs an export declaration to Japanese customs.

What this means for a proxy order. The proxy is the sender, so the proxy pays the duty and the operator's fee, and both are costs of your order. Ask for them itemised before you pay. A proxy quote that shows shipping and a service fee but no customs line is either including it silently or has not worked it out yet.

What happens at the US end

CBP's interim final rule of 24 June 2026, effective 24 July 2026, suspends the de minimis exemption for mail indefinitely and replaces the old handling with a postal informal entry. The parts that matter to a buyer:

So what rate is it?

There is no single answer, and anyone giving you one without asking what the item is has made it up. The rate depends on the classification of the goods, their country of origin, and whatever tariffs are in force on the day the entry is prepared.

The nearest thing to a published figure comes from CBP's own analysis of this rule. Taking a sample of 392,312 comparable low-value entries from September to November 2025, it divided $13,847,415 of duties, taxes and fees by $160,675,653 of goods to get an effective average rate of 8.62% — and that figure explicitly excludes the country-level tariffs that sat on top of it at the time. It is an average across every kind of commodity, not a rate for toys, and it is CBP's own estimate of what postal shipments would look like under the rule rather than a measurement of what they now do.

Those country-level tariffs are the part that has moved most, and the part this page will not guess at. The IEEPA tariffs the 2025 order was built on were struck down by the Supreme Court on 20 February 2026. A 10% surcharge under section 122 of the Trade Act replaced them from 24 February 2026, and by its own text it ran 150 days, to 24 July 2026, unless Congress extended it; a trade court held it invalid in May, and collection continued under an appeal-court stay. What is charged on a Japanese-origin parcel today, on top of the classification rate, is not something this page has verified against a document, so it does not say. The prepayment quote is the only number that will.

The only number specific to your parcel is the one the prepayment application produces when the proxy actually files it. That is the figure worth putting into the comparison.

The gift exemption still exists, and it is not for this

The rules above suspend one exemption — the $800 administrative one. They leave alone the exemption for bona fide gifts of $100 or less sent by one person to another, and CBP's rule says so in as many words. Japan Post's table reflects it: a genuine gift under $100 still goes from any post office with nothing prepaid.

An item you bought through a proxy is not a gift, whoever is named on the label. Declaring it as one is a false declaration to customs, and the consequences fall on the person whose address it is sent to. Do not do it, and treat a proxy that offers to as a reason to use a different proxy.

One more requirement, since 8 July 2026

The Consumer Product Safety Commission now requires certificates of compliance for regulated consumer products to be filed electronically with the customs entry. Toys are a regulated category. CPSC's announcement stresses that it creates no new testing or certification duty — importers already had to hold this information — and that it applies regardless of shipment value, including low-value direct-to-consumer shipments. Foreign trade zone entries follow on 8 January 2027.

What the announcement does not say is whether an individual importing a single item for personal use is caught by it. We have not found an official answer, so this page does not give one.

Once you have the prepayment figure, the comparison is arithmetic.

Compare the two routes

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Corrections