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Landed Cost Calculator

How we calculate landed cost

What this calculator actually computes

Landed cost is the all-in figure you pay to get goods onto your dock — not just the supplier's invoice. It bundles the product price, freight, insurance, customs duty, import tax (GST/VAT), and the government processing fees that kick in on commercial-scale shipments. Get any one input wrong and the total drifts by hundreds of dollars. So the engine is built to mirror exactly how a customs authority assembles the bill, line by line, in the order they do it.

Why the duty base matters: CIF vs FOB

The single biggest source of wrong answers is using the wrong base value for duty. Countries don't agree on this. Many value duty on CIF (cost + insurance + freight to the border), so international shipping inflates the duty figure. Australia is FOB-style: duty is charged on the customs value, which approximates the goods loaded at the port of export. International freight and insurance to Australia are stripped out before duty is calculated — though foreign inland freight and packing before export stay in.

Among the destinations covered here, the UK and EU value duty on CIF, while the US, Canada and Australia are FOB-style — international freight and insurance to the border are stripped out before duty is calculated. The engine never assumes: each country's data file declares its dutyBasis, and the calculation reads from there. We don't hardcode "freight is always dutiable", because for the FOB-style countries it isn't.

Why GST/VAT compounds on duty

Import tax is not simply a percentage of your goods. Where it applies, it is almost always charged on a base that already includes the duty — so the taxes stack rather than run in parallel. But what else goes into that base differs sharply by country, and that is exactly where single-formula calculators go wrong:

  • Australia and New Zealand charge GST (10% / 15%) on the Value of the Taxable Importation = customs value + duty + international freight and insurance. Even though duty excluded the freight, the GST base adds it back — the same shipping cost sits outside the duty base but inside the tax base.
  • Most destinations here — the UK, EU, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the UAE, Switzerland and Turkey — charge their VAT/GST on the customs value (CIF) + duty. Because the duty base already includes freight and insurance, the tax base does too. (Singapore and the UAE are no-/low-duty for most goods; Switzerland's customs duty is uniquely charged by weight, not value; Indonesia adds a creditable PPh 22 income-tax prepayment alongside.)
  • Canada charges GST (5%) on the value for duty + duty. Its value for duty is FOB-style (international freight excluded), so that freight stays out of both the duty base and the GST base — the opposite of Australia.
  • India compounds in three layers: Basic Customs Duty on the CIF assessable value, then a Social Welfare Surcharge of 10% of the duty, then IGST on assessable value + duty + surcharge — so the tax is levied on both duties as well as the goods.
  • Brazil stacks the most: Import Duty on the CIF value, IPI on CIF + duty, PIS/COFINS on the CIF value, then ICMS grossed up "por dentro" — its base legally includes the tax itself, so the pre-ICMS total is divided by (1 − the ICMS rate). The effective burden often tops 75%.
  • The US has no federal VAT/GST at all; only the duty and federal fees apply at the border.

The common thread is that tax stacks on the duty; the variable is the rest of the base. The engine models this as a separate, per-country tax base rather than one shared "dutiable value", which is why it stays correct where a single-base shortcut would not. Tax also isn't universal within a country — basic food, some medical items, books and young children's clothing (UK), and basic groceries (Canada) are zero-rated — so the calculator treats the rate as an input per category, not a fixed percentage on everything.

How Incoterms feed the customs value

Your supplier quotes a price under an Incoterm, and that term silently decides what's already inside the number. EXW is goods only; FOB/FCA includes loading at origin; CFR adds freight; CIF adds freight and insurance; DDP means the seller has already paid the duty and tax. The tool asks for the Incoterm so it knows what to add versus what's bundled — and, critically for Australia, what to strip back out of the customs value while keeping it in the VoTI.

De minimis and the two GST mechanisms

Below a country's de minimis threshold, low-value parcels clear without duty or tax. Australia's is AUD 1,000 customs value — at or under that, goods clear free of duty and GST at the border (alcohol and tobacco excepted). Separately, since 1 July 2018, GST on consignments of AUD 1,000 or less sold to consumers is collected by the overseas seller or marketplace at checkout. These are two different mechanisms, and the calculator surfaces both rather than conflating them. Above the threshold, the fixed charges appear: Import Processing Charge and the biosecurity charge.

Thresholds and mechanisms vary widely by destination, so the engine reads them from each country's data file. The UK uses £135 on the goods' intrinsic value (above which duty and import VAT apply; below it, the seller charges VAT at checkout). Canada uses the CUSMA courier thresholds for goods from the US/Mexico — no duty at or under CA$150, no tax at or under CA$40 — but CA$20 for postal shipments or other origins. The US has no de minimis to rely on (the $800 Section 321 exemption is suspended). Each is encoded per country, never assumed.

Correctness by construction

Every rate, threshold, and fee lives in a country data file with source links and a lastVerified date — nothing is buried in code. The engine is pure and unit-tested against worked examples drawn straight from each destination's official authority — the ABF/ATO (Australia), CBP (United States), HMRC (United Kingdom), the CBSA/CRA (Canada), the EU Commission and German customs (Zoll), India's CBIC, and the customs services of New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the UAE, Switzerland and Turkey. It's an estimate, not a customs ruling: your tariff classification and origin paperwork ultimately set the duty rate. But the structure of the calculation matches how the border actually works, so the only thing you need to verify is the inputs.