Supply Chain
Import Duties
Three findable facts, classification code, country of origin and customs value, set a permanent percentage of your landed cost, and the liability for getting them wrong is yours, not your broker's.
- Beginner
- 6 min total
- 10 chapters
What decision this helps you make: Your products' correct codes and rates, found before ordering, and which legal engineering (composition, origin, valuation) your volumes justify.
- Related case study: A DTC Brand That Grew Into a Cash Crunch
- Related data & research: Working Capital Patterns in Product Businesses
What this topic is
Import duties tax goods at the border by classification code, country of origin, and customs value. Those are three facts the importer can and must know, because the legal liability for them lands on the importer of record.
Why it matters
Duty is a permanent percentage on every unit forever. Homework done before ordering prices it in; homework skipped surfaces as customs-day surprises, audit penalties, or a sourcing agent's casual felony proposal.
Who should learn it
Anyone importing. The code homework is the cheapest permanent discount in the supply chain.
What you will understand
- The three facts: classification, origin, customs value
- Importer-of-record liability: why broker errors are your errors
- Legal engineering vs. evasion: the bright line and its felony side
- Binding rulings: converting uncertainty into official written answers
Prerequisites
Common misconception
"My freight forwarder handles the duty stuff." They file it; you own it. The importer of record, meaning you, carries the legal liability for classification, origin, and valuation, and broker mistakes are audited, penalized, and back-collected against YOUR business, years later. Brokers are essential filing partners; they are not underwriters of your compliance, and most never see the product knowledge (materials, function, composition) that correct classification runs on.