How do you tell customs who is responsible for paying the duties and taxes on a shipment?

Terms of trade are generally indicating when shipping by using Incoterms®. “Incoterms” is a trademark of the International Chamber of Commerce. These rules and trade terms are recognized and accepted as the standard for negotiating international trading between buyers and sellers.

There are a wide variety of shipping terms, but with DHL there are only two that are really used.

  1. DAP (Delivered at Place) is the default and means that the receiver will pay any pending duties and taxes.
  2. DDP (Delivered Duty Paid; also, DTP) says that any duties or taxes are to bill back to the sender. Note that DDP service carries a fee to cover the labor for DHL to pay the duties and taxes for the sender and then bill them back to that company in another country.

While other terms may be used with other carriers and modes of transport, these are the two you should use when shipping with DHL.

To indicate whether your shipment is DAP or DDP in our shipping platform PSCSHIP, please make the selection in the details section while setting up your shipment as shown here:

Our customers can always contact us at 800-827-7987 or customerservice@preferredship.com with any questions and we will be happy to assist.

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ABOUT PREFERRED SHIPPING

We have more than 25 years of experience supporting small and medium businesses with their shipping needs. As the oldest authorized reseller of DHL Express, we are international shipping experts. In addition to our international import and export services, we offer heavy air freight, domestic USPS services, and domestic trucking services.