How customs payments are calculated

What actually falls due

Several separate charges are collected at the border, and treating them as one lump is where budgets go wrong. They are charged on different bases, they follow different rules, and only one of them ever comes back.

• Import dutyThe principal charge. The rate follows the commodity code and the country of origin, and across the tariff it runs from nothing at all to a substantial share of the value. Nobody reclaims it: whatever it comes to, it stays inside the cost of the goods.
• Import VATPaid to the customs authority before the goods are released. From 1 January 2026 the standard Russian rate is 22 per cent, with reduced rates for certain categories. A company on the general tax regime deducts it afterwards; a company on the simplified regime has no such right.
• Customs feeA charge for the clearance itself. It is set as a fixed sum on a scale of customs value rather than as a percentage, so it is the one line here that moves in steps rather than in proportion to the deal.
• ExciseOnly for excisable goods, and that list is closed and set by law rather than assembled case by case. Where your goods are not on it the line does not exist; where they are, it also enlarges the base the VAT is charged on.
• Anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard dutiesTrade-defence measures adopted for a named category of goods from a named country. They sit on top of the ordinary duty and can be larger than it, which is why origin is established at the same moment as the code, not later.

Only the VAT is recoverable, and only by a company on the general tax regime. Everything else on that list stays inside the cost of the goods — so “what do I pay at the border” and “what of it never comes back” are two different questions, and it is the second one a margin is built on.

What each charge is charged on

Two facts do most of the work here, and both of them push the figure past the supplier’s invoice.

The first: duty is not charged on the invoice total. It is charged on the customs value — the price actually paid or payable for the goods, plus the cost of bringing them as far as the customs frontier of the Union: carriage, handling and insurance over that stretch. An ex-works price is therefore not the base, because the freight to the border has to be added to it before anything at all is applied. Where the delivery term already includes carriage, that cost sits inside the price and the two figures converge.

The second: VAT is not charged on the customs value either. It is charged on the customs value with the import duty added on top, plus excise where the goods carry it. Tax charged on a duty is not a quirk of the Russian system — it is how the base is defined wherever the two are collected together — but it does mean every unit of duty costs its face value plus the tax standing on it.

Put the two together and the amount that has to be funded before release is built from the goods, the freight to the border, the duty, and a tax charged on all three at once.

One term needs unpacking. Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan form the Eurasian Economic Union: a single customs territory with one external frontier. “The border” in this article means that frontier — the port or land crossing where the goods arrive on Union territory — not the door of your warehouse, and not the line between two member states, which the goods cross afterwards without a further declaration.

The order the figures come in

The sequence matters, because each step is the input to the next one. Working from the top:

1. Establish the commodity codeTen digits from the Union’s classification, built on the Harmonised System. From that single decision follow the duty rate, the list the VAT rate is read from, whether a trade-defence measure attaches, which permits and certificates the goods need, and whether they fall under digital marking.
2. Build the customs valueThe price of the goods plus carriage, handling and insurance as far as the Union’s frontier. What the delivery term covers decides how much of that is already sitting inside the supplier’s price.
3. Work out the dutyThe rate for the code, applied to the customs value. Some tariff lines are specific rather than ad valorem — an amount per kilogram or per litre — and some are combined, where a wording such as “x per cent, but not less than y per kilogram” means the larger of the two amounts is the one payable.
4. Add excise if the goods carry itWorked out under its own rules, on the quantity or on the value depending on the goods. For everything outside the excise list this step is skipped entirely.
5. Build the VAT baseCustoms value plus duty plus excise. This is the number the tax rate is applied to, and none of the discounts you negotiated with the supplier reach it: the price of the goods, the freight to the border and the duty are taxed as one figure.
6. Work out the VATThe rate carried by the category the code falls into, applied to that base.
7. Add the customs feeRead off the scale against the customs value declared for the consignment.

A budget written as “the price of the goods plus 22 per cent” understates the amount in two separate places: the base is missing the freight to the border, and the tax has not been applied to the duty. The two shortfalls compound, and they surface at the point where the money has to clear before release.

Where the rates are read from

None of these numbers is negotiable, and none of them can be inferred from what the goods look like.

The duty rate comes from the Union’s common customs tariff, against the ten-digit code. Because the classification is built on the Harmonised System, the first six digits are the ones anyone who has filed a declaration in the EU already recognises. Two products a buyer would describe in the same words can sit under codes whose rates differ several times over, and the wording on the supplier’s invoice has no authority over which one applies.

The country of origin moves that same number twice. Goods originating in certain countries carry a preference that lowers the rate, evidenced by a certificate of origin obtained through the supplier before shipping rather than asked for after arrival. Origin also decides whether an anti-dumping or other trade-defence duty attaches to the code at all.

The VAT rate is not in the tariff. The standard rate applies unless the goods fall into a category on a separate list carrying a reduced rate, and part of what crosses the border is exempt from the tax altogether. Which line applies is read off that list against the same code: one classification decision, two rates.

Specific figures are deliberately absent from this article. Tariff lines are amended, trade-defence measures are introduced and lapse, and the lists behind the VAT rate change on their own schedule. A rate printed in an article goes out of date without announcing it; the number that counts is the one in force for your code on the day the declaration is registered.

A company importing the same goods repeatedly can apply for an advance classification decision. It fixes the code for a period set by law and binds the customs authority to it. The rate itself still follows whatever the tariff says on the day the declaration is registered.

If you have cleared goods into the EU

The machinery will be familiar, because it is the same machinery. A customs value built on the transaction price with carriage to the frontier inside it. A duty from a tariff line under the Harmonised System. Import VAT charged not on the customs value but on the customs value with the duty added. The tax recoverable as input tax by a business entitled to recover it. Four mechanisms, four counterparts.

Three things are different, and those are the ones worth checking rather than assuming. The rates. Duty comes from the Union’s common tariff, the same document for all five states; VAT does not — it is a national tax, and the standard Russian rate is 22 per cent from 1 January 2026. The frontier, which encloses five states rather than one: goods cleared at a crossing in Kazakhstan travel on into Russia without a second declaration, and the clearance is one event rather than one per country.

And the recovery. In the EU the question is whether the importing business is registered for VAT. Here it is which tax regime the company sits on: the general regime carries the right to deduct import VAT, while the simplified regime — a lighter tax status aimed at smaller companies — carries no right to deduct input tax of any kind. Two companies importing identical goods can end up with different landed costs, and that difference is not in the customs arithmetic at all.

Why the figure belongs before the contract

Every input to this calculation is fixed by decisions taken before anything moves, and none of them can be revisited once the goods are standing on Union territory.

The code sets the duty rate and points at the VAT rate. The origin decides whether a preference lowers the first and whether a trade-defence duty is added to it. The delivery term decides how much freight is already inside the base: an EXW price and a CIF price for identical goods produce different customs values, and so different amounts on two lines rather than one. All three are settled in the contract with the supplier, which is the last moment at which they are still yours to choose.

What arrival changes is the cost of being wrong. Goods wait for release in a temporary storage warehouse — a commercial facility licensed to hold them under customs supervision — where storage is charged by the day, while the shipping line’s allowance on the container runs down on a clock of its own. A calculation performed at that point is not a decision any more. It is a bill.

Hence the practical case for pricing the shipment against the code before signing: a margin that survives one duty rate can disappear under another, and which rate applies is knowable while the deal is still on the table.

What can still move the number

A calculation made before the deal is an estimate of a rule-bound figure, not a guarantee. Three things move it, and two of them answer to preparation.

• An adjustment of the customs valueWhere a declared price sits below the data the customs authority holds for those goods from that origin, it asks for the price to be substantiated. The rules require the transaction value to be accepted where it is documented and consistent with that data; where the reply does not stand up, the value may be determined by another method and the difference assessed. What the outcome turns on is the file: contract, invoice, evidence of payment, transport documents.
• A dispute about the codeA different code means a different duty rate, a possible change of VAT rate, and a recalculation of everything below them. This is the risk an advance classification decision is meant to close.
• The exchange rateThe payments are settled in roubles, converted at the official rate for the date on which the declaration is registered. Between signing the contract and clearing the goods, that date is a variable nobody controls.

The first two are largely a function of preparation. A complete file on the deal and a code established in advance take most of the argument off the table before it can start.

What we work out before you sign

We establish the commodity code for your goods, check the origin against the measures in force for that code, read off the duty rate and the VAT rate that follow from it, and set the customs fee and the clearance alongside them. The delivery term goes in as well, because it decides how much of the freight the duty is charged on.

What comes out is a landed figure you can hold against the supplier’s quote — and, underneath it, a second figure: the part that never comes back. That is the one your selling price has to cover.