If you’re an international business, you’ll have to consider not just shipping but also international taxes and duties. Keep the following in mind as you create an international shipping plan and design your international shipping budget. Assessment of Taxes and Duties If you ship items internationally, it is imperative that you include a concise, accurate description of the content you’re shipping. This will not only help your package clear customs and reduce delays; it also impacts how taxes and duties are calculated. The three main questions you should answer in your description are: what is the product? What is it made from? What is its intended use? Make your description as specific as possible, but concise. Value Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST) A Value Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a general consumption tax. Whether your business will bear the final cost of the tax—or whether it will be fully deductible—depends on the country and whether you’re VAT-registered. generally, though, VAT and GSTs are considered taxes on customer expenditures. With international shipping for eCommerce, they assessed the “duty paid value” of the goods. Paying International Taxes and Duties Let Clarity become your one-stop international shipping integration solution. There are a few different ways to deal with the payment of international taxes and duties. The most common way is to automatically bill the international tax and/or duty to the recipient. However, as a shipper you can also request that FedEx bill you or a third party. To do this, simply select yourself or a third party as the responsible part on your FedEx Expanded Service International Airway Bill. If you have further questions about shipping integration or international taxes and duties, contact us. We can design your CRM system so that it automates shipping, tax calculation, label printing, order tracking, and more. contact Clarity, so we can become your one-stop international shipping integration solution. To learn more about international ecommerce, please browse the following articles: What You'll Need for an International ecommerce System Customs and Duties for International ecommerce Building an International Web-Based Shipping Platform