How to Charge Import Duty at Checkout in WooCommerce

Until August 2025, most small parcels from Australia paid no US duty at all: anything under USD 800 went in duty-free. The US suspended that allowance, and since then Australian senders have paid the duty up front, through a Zonos account, when they lodge with Australia Post.

On 24 July 2026 the calculation changed too. Duty is now worked out per item, from each item's HS code and country of origin, as a percentage of its declared value. Zonos adds a handling fee of 10% of the duty, plus a flat admin fee per parcel.

Your customer never sees a bill at the door. The cost is yours, unless your checkout charges it back. Here's how to do that in WooCommerce.

Fee line or price rise?

There are three ways to deal with it.

• Absorb it. Simple, and fine if your US margin can take it. To see how much it's costing you, try the US duty calculator.
• Raise your prices. WooCommerce holds one price for each product, whatever the destination, so without a pricing plugin, a price rise hits your Australian customers too. And a flat rise overcharges the items that attract little duty and undercharges the ones that attract a lot.
• Charge a fee at checkout. A separate line, only on orders going to the US, worked out from the order. The customer sees the real cost before paying, and domestic buyers pay nothing extra.

For most Australian stores, the fee is the fairest and clearest of the three. The rest of this post is about doing it well.

What WooCommerce can do on its own

WooCommerce has no screen for checkout fees. A fee is added by code, on the woocommerce_cart_calculate_fees hook, so without a plugin you need a developer.

There is one built-in workaround. The Flat rate shipping method's cost field accepts a percentage, written as [fee percent="5.5"], worked out on the cost of the items. Add it to the flat rate in your US shipping zone and the duty rides along with the postage.

It works, but the customer sees a dearer shipping price with no explanation, it only covers flat rate methods, and every US method needs its own copy. If a customer wonders why US shipping went up, there's no answer on the page.

Adding a duty fee with International Fees and Coupons

Tradewind International Fees and Coupons is a free WooCommerce plugin that adds fees by country or continent. To set up US duty:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Fees and Coupons and add a region: United States.
2. Add a fee. Give it a name the customer will understand, such as "US import duty". Adding {amount} to the name shows the rate: "US import duty ({amount})" appears in the cart as "US import duty (5.5%)".
3. Choose a percentage or a fixed amount, and enter it.
4. Optionally, limit it to one shipping method, or to an order value: greater than, at least, less than, at most, or exactly an amount you set.
5. Write the "What is this?" note (more on that below), and save.

The plugin reads the shipping country, falling back to the billing country, and adds the fee as its own line in the cart and checkout totals. It's added as a non-taxable line. It works on the classic cart and checkout and on the Cart and Checkout blocks.

One setting to check: Include shipping in fee calculations. Australia Post says duty is a percentage of the declared value, so if you declare the value of the goods, leave postage out of the fee.

What percentage to charge

Start from the duty rate for what you sell, then add Zonos's handling fee, which is 10% of the duty. A 5% duty rate costs you 5.5% of the goods, plus the admin fee per parcel.

For a A$120 order at 5%, that's A$6.00 in duty and A$0.60 in handling. A fee of 5.5% charges A$6.60.

The admin fee is flat, so charge it as a flat amount. Add a second fee to the same region, such as "Duty processing" at the amount on your Zonos statement. Two fees on the same region always stack, so the customer sees both.

To find your rate, check a recent Zonos charge, or look up your products' 10-digit codes in the US tariff schedule. If you haven't got those codes yet, see how to add HS codes to WooCommerce products.

Don't charge it on orders over USD 2,500

Australia Post says shipments valued over USD 2,500 follow the older process, where the receiver pays the import duties and fees. Charge duty at checkout on one of those and your customer pays twice.

If you sell anything that expensive, add an order value condition to the duty fee: "at most" the Australian-dollar equivalent of USD 2,500, set a little under to allow for exchange rate moves.

The "What is this?" note

A fee the customer didn't expect, with no explanation, looks like a surprise charge. A one-line explanation fixes that. For example:

US import duty. We pay it to US Customs before your parcel leaves Australia, so there's nothing to pay when it arrives.

Each fee in the plugin can carry a note. On the classic cart and checkout, a "?" appears beside the fee, and clicking it opens the note in a row underneath. The Cart and Checkout blocks have no place for a note beside an individual fee, so there the notes appear as an "About these charges" list under the order summary.

Country and continent rules

A region can be a single country or a whole continent, using WooCommerce's own list of which countries sit in which continent. A country picks up its continent's rules as well as its own.

That's useful beyond the US. You might add a handling fee for all of Europe and a separate rule for one country within it. When a country and its continent both have fees, you choose what happens:

• Stack: charge every matching fee
• Highest only: charge only the largest
• Country first: the country's fees, falling back to the continent's
• Continent first: the continent's fees, falling back to the country's

Fees on the same region always stack, whatever you choose, because two fees on one country are two things owed.

Scoping duty to products and categories (Pro)

A single US percentage works when your products attract similar rates. A mixed range doesn't: a percentage high enough to cover your dearest items overcharges the rest.

International Fees and Coupons Pro lets a rule apply to the whole order, to named products, or to whole product categories:

• A percentage is worked out on the matching lines only, so 5.5% on the Jewellery category is 5.5% of the jewellery, not of the whole order.
• A fixed amount is only charged when the cart holds something that matches.
• Postage is never included in a scoped rule, because it can't be pinned to one line.

Pro also takes a first and last day on every rule, so when a rate change is announced you can enter it that day and it starts on the right morning. And it reports what each region actually collected, by fee, so you can check the fee against your Zonos charges.

Checklist

• Know your duty rate, from a recent Zonos charge or your 10-digit codes
• A "US import duty" fee for the United States, at the rate plus 10%
• A flat fee for the Zonos admin charge, if you want to recover it
• A "What is this?" note on every fee
• No duty fee on orders over USD 2,500
• Scoped by category if your range attracts different rates

For the full background, see shipping to the US from Australia in 2026.

Source: Australia Post, US import tariff changes, checked 28 September 2026. Rules change often, so check that page before relying on any figure here.