Кедендік бағалаудың түсіндірмесі: Неліктен жарияланған құн тек шот-фактура бағасы емес
кіріспе
Ask ten importers what they declare to customs and nine will answer without hesitation: the number on the commercial invoice. It is a natural assumption. The invoice shows what the buyer agreed to pay, it travels with the cargo, and it is the first document a broker asks for. Yet in most customs systems around the world, including the United States, the European Union and China, the declared value is a legal construct rather than a copy of the invoice total. It starts with the price actually paid or payable, then moves up or down depending on what that price includes, what it leaves out, and what the buyer is quietly providing to the seller through other channels.
The stakes are higher than they have been in a generation. Most duties are ad valorem, meaning they are a percentage of the declared value, so every dollar of value missing from an entry is duty that goes unpaid, plus penalties if the omission is found later. With U.S. tariff rates at their highest levels in decades, that arithmetic has become very visible to compliance teams and to regulators. Trade press in 2026 reports U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sending first sale valuation questionnaires to importers that cover entries from 2023 through 2025, and describes a June 2026 executive order on customs enforcement aimed at undervaluation, misclassification and split invoicing, backed by expanded data analytics. Whatever final shape those measures take, the direction of travel is obvious: valuation has moved from the back office to the front line of enforcement.
This guide is written from the freight forwarding side of the table, which is where valuation problems usually surface first: a shipment on hold, an entry that gets flagged, or a CF-28 request for information that lands on someone’s desk with a 30-day clock. We will walk through the legal foundation, the additions and deductions that push a declared value away from the invoice, the special cases of related-party sales and first sale, a worked example with real arithmetic, and a practical process for keeping your numbers defensible. The examples focus on U.S. imports because that is where most China-origin cross-border e-commerce freight ends up, with notes on where other jurisdictions differ.
Why the Invoice Is Only the Starting Point
A commercial invoice is a commercial document. A seller drafts it to get paid, and it reflects whatever the two parties agreed to put on it. Customs law is trying to answer a different question: what is the real economic value of these goods as they cross the border? The two questions overlap most of the time, but they diverge in predictable ways. A seller may quote a delivered price that folds in freight, insurance and even import duties. A buyer may ship the factory a set of molds free of charge and expect a lower unit price in return. A brand owner may pay a royalty to a licensor on every unit sold, and that licensor never appears on the supplier’s invoice at all. In each case the invoice total is an honest record of the cash moving between buyer and seller on that page, and in each case the customs value is a different number.
Customs authorities therefore treat the invoice as evidence rather than as the answer. Officers and auditors compare it against purchase orders, payment records, contracts, freight bills, licensing agreements and, increasingly, the importer’s own accounting data. When those sources tell a story that the declared value does not, the discrepancy is what triggers a review. Understanding this evidence-based approach is the key to almost everything that follows.
The Legal Backbone: Transaction Value and the Six Methods
Transaction Value: The Price Actually Paid or Payable
In the United States the rules sit in 19 U.S.C. 1401a, which implements the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement. The same architecture, with local variations, applies in the EU, China, Canada, Australia and most other trading economies. The primary method of appraisement is transaction value: the price actually paid or payable for merchandise when sold for exportation to the United States, plus a fixed list of statutory additions. Practitioners commonly cite that more than 90 percent of imports are valued this way, which is why almost every valuation dispute is really a dispute about what belongs inside that price.
The price actually paid or payable is defined as the total payment, direct or indirect, that the buyer makes to or for the benefit of the seller. CBP’s regulation at 19 CFR 152.103 confirms that the price is taken however it was derived, so discounts, pricing formulas and negotiated arrangements are all part of it. Indirect payments count as well. If the buyer settles a debt the seller owes to a third party, or offsets an amount the seller owed the buyer against the goods, that value is part of the price even though no line on the invoice says so.
Transaction value also has conditions. There must be a genuine sale for export to the country of importation, which is why consigned goods, leased goods and free replacements do not have a transaction value in the ordinary sense. The sale cannot be subject to conditions or considerations whose value cannot be determined, no part of the proceeds of a later resale may flow back to the seller unless it is added, and the buyer and seller either must not be related or, if they are, the relationship must not have influenced the price. When any of those conditions fails, the valuation moves down the ladder to the next method.
The Hierarchy of Methods
U.S. law lists six methods and requires them to be applied in a strict order of preference. Customs must use the first method that can properly be applied, and only moves to the next when the previous one cannot be used. The table below summarizes the ladder.
| әдіс | Basis of value | When it matters in practice |
| 1. Transaction value | Price actually paid or payable, plus statutory additions | The default for the vast majority of arm’s-length sales |
| 2. Identical merchandise | Previously accepted transaction value of identical goods exported at about the same time | Rare; needs a comparable, accepted earlier entry |
| 3. Similar merchandise | Transaction value of commercially interchangeable goods of the same country and producer type | Rare; comparability is hard to prove |
| 4. Deductive value | U.S. resale price less commissions, profit, transport and duties | Used for goods with no sale for export, such as consignments |
| 5. Computed value | Cost of materials and fabrication, plus profit and general expenses | Needs producer cost data, often unavailable |
| 6. Fallback value | Flexible reasonable means consistent with the earlier methods | Last resort; certain arbitrary bases are prohibited |
One nuance is worth remembering: an importer may ask CBP to apply computed value before deductive value, reversing methods four and five. In day-to-day cross-border e-commerce nearly every shipment is valued on transaction value, so the real contest is not which method applies but what should be added to, or subtracted from, the price the seller invoiced.
What Gets Added to the Invoice Price
The statute requires five additions to the price actually paid or payable, to the extent they are not already included in it and can be supported by sufficient information. If the information is not available, the transaction value method may not be usable at all, which is why record-keeping matters as much as the rule itself. The table below sets out the five additions and the places where the money tends to hide.
| Statutory addition | Ол нені түсіреді | Where it usually hides |
| Packing costs | Containers, coverings, labor and materials used to pack the goods for shipment, when the buyer bears the cost | Separate carton or polybag supplier invoices; packaging shipped to the factory by the buyer |
| Selling commissions | Commissions the buyer pays to the seller’s agent, excluding bona fide buying commissions | Agent fee invoices settled outside the purchase order |
| Көмек | Goods and services the buyer supplies free or at reduced cost for use in making the goods | Tooling purchase orders, design department time, materials sent to the factory |
| Роялти және лицензиялық алымдар | Payments the buyer must make, directly or indirectly, as a condition of the sale of the goods | Licensing agreements and quarterly royalty statements paid to a third party |
| Proceeds of resale | Any part of later resale, disposal or use proceeds that accrues to the seller | Profit-sharing clauses and volume rebate arrangements |
Assists: The Most Overlooked Addition
An assist is anything the buyer supplies to the manufacturer, free or below cost, that is used in producing the imported goods. The statute names four categories: materials, components and parts that are incorporated into the goods; tools, dies, molds and similar items used in production; merchandise consumed in production, such as catalysts or cutting fluids; and engineering, development, artwork, design work, plans and sketches undertaken outside the United States. That last category has an important limit, because design work done inside the United States is not an assist, while the same work performed in a Shenzhen studio or by an overseas contractor is.
Assists are the classic example of value that never appears on the invoice. Suppose a brand owner buys an injection mold for $12,000 and ships it to a factory in Dongguan, and the factory prices the finished product at $4.00 a unit on the understanding that the mold is free. The invoice reflects a $4.00 product, but the buyer has effectively paid part of the price in tooling. If the mold is expected to produce 60,000 units, each unit carries $0.20 of assist value, and the declared value should be $4.20. The value of an assist is generally the buyer’s acquisition cost, or the cost of production if the buyer made it, and it includes the cost of transporting the assist to the place of production. It must be apportioned reasonably across the goods it helps to produce.
CBP knows this, which is why first sale audits and valuation reviews look specifically for undeclared assists. Importers who supply tooling, fabric, labels, printed packaging or specialized components to their factories and then declare the bare factory invoice price are undervaluing their goods, whether or not they meant to. The problem is often organizational rather than deliberate: the engineering team buys the mold, the supply chain team places the order, and the customs broker only ever sees the supplier invoice. Nobody in the chain owns the full picture.
The practical remedy is a standing procedure that records every item sent to a supplier at no charge or below cost, its value, the goods it relates to and the units over which it will be apportioned. That record should feed the entry data on every shipment for as long as the assist is being used. Without it, the amortization rate in your head becomes the amortization rate in an audit, and the auditor will not be as generous.
Royalties and License Fees
Royalties are added to the customs value when two things are true: they relate to the imported merchandise, and the buyer must pay them, directly or indirectly, as a condition of the sale of the goods for export to the United States. Trademark royalties on branded apparel, patent fees on electronics and license fees for character merchandise are the usual suspects. If a U.S. distributor cannot buy the licensed product from the factory unless it also pays the licensor, CBP is likely to view the royalty as a condition of sale even if the licensor is a separate company that never sends the factory an invoice.
The analysis is contract-driven, and it is one place where careful drafting at the beginning of a relationship prevents arguments later. Who the licensor is, whether the seller is involved in approving the buyer, whether the license covers the imported goods themselves or only the right to distribute them in the United States, and whether the royalty is calculated on imported units or on later domestic sales all shape the result. Payments for the right to reproduce the imported goods in the United States are treated differently and are not added. Different jurisdictions also read the underlying WTO provision differently, so a royalty treatment that works for a U.S. entry may not carry across to an EU one.
For e-commerce sellers, this issue arrives quietly. A seller who lists licensed products on a marketplace, or who buys white-label goods under a brand license, may pay a percentage of net sales to a brand owner every quarter and never think of it as an import cost. When customs requests the licensing agreement, the seller finds out how much duty it has been missing.
Packing, Commissions and Proceeds of Resale
Packing is straightforward once you know to look for it. If the buyer pays for cartons, inner packaging, pallets or labor to pack goods for export, and that expense is not already in the seller’s price, it is added. Selling commissions require a distinction that trips up many importers. A commission paid to an agent who works for the seller is added, while a bona fide buying commission paid to an agent who acts for the buyer, under the buyer’s control and without a stake in the sale, is not. Calling someone a buying agent does not make it so, and CBP examines the actual relationship, the agent’s right to keep any margin, and who controls the agent.
Proceeds of resale are the least common addition but can be large where they occur. If the contract says that part of the buyer’s later resale revenue, or a rebate on downstream sales, flows back to the seller, that amount belongs in the customs value. Profit-sharing structures between a factory and a brand owner are the most likely place to find one.
What Can Be Taken Out of the Invoice Price
Adjustments run in both directions. The statute does not allow importers to shave value arbitrarily, but certain items are excluded from transaction value if they are identified separately and supported by documents. In the United States, these include international freight and insurance, the customs duties and federal excise taxes on the imported goods, and charges for construction, erection, assembly or maintenance performed after importation. The right to reproduce the imported goods in the United States is also excluded. The important word is separately. A charge that is buried in a lump-sum price cannot be deducted, because customs cannot verify it.
International Freight, Insurance and the Incoterms Effect
Incoterms are a common source of valuation error because the same product can be invoiced at very different totals depending on how far the seller’s obligations extend. The U.S. approach values goods at the point of export from the country of origin, roughly an FOB basis, so international carriage and insurance must be removed if the seller has included them. The EU, China and many other systems do the opposite and include freight and insurance to the border of entry, effectively a CIF basis. The same invoice can therefore lead to different declared values in different markets, and forwarders who handle multi-country flows need to keep that straight.
| Инкотерм | What the invoice price usually covers | Adjustment to reach U.S. customs value |
| EXW | Goods at the seller’s premises | No freight to remove; add packing, loading or assists paid outside the price |
| FCA / FOB | Goods delivered to the carrier or on board at the port of export | Closest to U.S. value; confirm additions such as assists and royalties |
| CFR / CIF | Price includes ocean freight; CIF also includes insurance | Deduct itemized international freight and insurance, supported by carrier and insurer documents |
| DAP | Delivery to a named place in the U.S., duties unpaid | Deduct international freight, insurance and U.S. inland freight |
| DDP | Delivery with duties and taxes paid by the seller | Deduct international freight, insurance, U.S. inland freight, duties and other post-import costs |
The deduction only works if it is documented. A seller who quotes a CIF price should be able to produce the ocean freight invoice, the bill of lading and the insurance certificate, and the amounts should tie to what was actually charged. Customs officers know that some suppliers inflate freight lines on invoices to make the product price look lower, and they treat round, unsupported freight figures with suspicion. Nor is it safe to deduct the same freight twice, once through the invoice and again through a separate forwarder bill, since the forwarder bill will show up in the same data set the auditor is looking at.
Post-Importation Costs and Duties
Costs incurred after the goods arrive, including U.S. inland transportation, қойма, installation, and the duties themselves, are not part of the transaction value, provided they are separately identified. Where goods are sold on delivered-duty-paid terms, the invoice total is the sum of many components, and the forwarder’s and broker’s documents are what let the importer unwind it accurately.
Related-Party Transactions: When the Price May Not Be Real
A large share of valuation disputes involve companies that buy from their own affiliates. Under U.S. law, parties are related when they are family members, partners, employer and employee, or when one owns, controls or holds 5 percent or more of the voting stock of the other, or when both are under common control. A Chinese factory that is a subsidiary of a U.S. brand, or a Hong Kong trading company owned by the same founder as the U.S. importer, falls squarely in this category.
Relatedness does not disqualify transaction value. It means the importer needs to show that the relationship did not influence the price. There are two ways to do that. The first is to demonstrate that the price was settled in a way consistent with normal pricing practices in the industry, or with how the seller prices to unrelated buyers. The second is to show that the price closely approximates one of several test values, such as the transaction value of identical or similar goods sold to unrelated buyers, the deductive value or the computed value of identical or similar goods. Either route needs solid evidence, not just an assertion.
The classic trap is a mismatch between transfer pricing for tax purposes and the value declared to customs. Tax teams often adjust intercompany prices at year-end to reach a target margin, sometimes upward and sometimes downward, while customs entries were made at the original prices months earlier. If the adjustment raises the price and no one tells the customs team, the importer has effectively underpaid duty on the entire year. If it lowers the price, the importer may be leaving a legitimate refund on the table. Either way, CBP can compare tax filings and entry data, and the disconnect is easy to see.
Documentation that holds up includes intercompany agreements, pricing policies, cost build-ups, comparable prices to unrelated customers and a written explanation of how year-end adjustments are treated for customs. Related-party importers who prepare this file in advance can answer a CF-28 in days. Those who do not often spend months reconstructing it.
First Sale: Lawful Savings, Serious Scrutiny
First sale is a valuation approach that allows an importer in a multi-tier supply chain to declare the price paid by the middleman to the manufacturer instead of the higher price the importer paid to the middleman. Take a factory that sells to a trading company at $80 a unit, and the trading company that sells to the U.S. importer at $100. Under ordinary transaction value the declared value is $100. Under a valid first sale claim it is $80, and at a 25 percent duty rate the duty falls from $25 to $20 a unit. The principle comes from Federal Circuit case law, notably Nissho Iwai, and CBP’s Treasury Decision 96-87 sets out the documentation it expects.
The requirements are demanding. There must be a bona fide sale between the manufacturer and the middleman, the middleman must take title and bear the risk of loss, the goods must be clearly destined for the United States at the time of the first sale, and the transactions must be at arm’s length. Importers need both invoices, proof of payment at each tier, evidence of title transfer, purchase orders and contracts for all parties, and any assists must be added back to the first sale price. CBP denies claims routinely where the middleman never actually owned the goods, where the paper trail has a missing tier, or where the manufacturer’s price to the middleman looks artificially low.
The environment has become tougher. Trade sources report that CBP began issuing First Sale Valuation Questionnaires in 2026, with short response deadlines and coverage of multiple years of entries, and that a bipartisan bill introduced in February 2026, the Last Sale Valuation Act, would end first sale if enacted. Large retailers have disclosed first sale as a mitigation tool in public filings, so the practice is mainstream, but the defensible version is the one that is documented at the time of the transaction rather than assembled after the questionnaire arrives. Importers using first sale should also remember that the exposure runs back several years if a claim fails.
A Worked Example: From Invoice Total to Customs Value
The following illustration uses hypothetical figures to show how a declared value is built. A U.S. importer buys 5,000 units of a branded consumer product from a supplier in Guangdong, invoiced at $42,000 on CIF Los Angeles terms. The carrier invoice shows $1,800 of ocean freight and the insurance certificate shows $200. The importer separately supplied a mold whose apportioned share for this shipment is $4,000, pays a 5 percent style license royalty that works out to $2,000 on these goods, bought $600 of printed cartons that were sent to the factory, and pays the seller’s sales agent $800 in commission.
| Жол элементі | Сома (USD) | емдеу |
| Invoice total, CIF Los Angeles | 42,000 | Басталу нүктесі |
| Less international ocean freight | (1,800) | Deduct, itemized and documented |
| Аздау жүктерді сақтандыру | (200) | Deduct, itemized and documented |
| Price actually paid, excluding international carriage | 40,000 | Base transaction value |
| Plus apportioned mold (assist) | 4,000 | Statutory addition |
| Plus license royalty | 2,000 | Statutory addition |
| Plus printed cartons supplied by buyer (packing) | 600 | Statutory addition |
| Plus selling commission to seller’s agent | 800 | Statutory addition |
| Кеден құны | 47,400 | Value to declare |
| Duty at an illustrative 25 percent | 11,850 | Correct duty |
| Duty if the $42,000 invoice total were declared | 10,500 | Underpayment of $1,350 |
Notice what happened. The invoice total was too high in one respect, because it included freight and insurance, and far too low in another, because it missed $7,400 of dutiable additions. The net effect was a declared value $5,400 below the correct one. The duty gap on this single entry is $1,350, and the negligence penalty ceiling of twice the lost duties would add up to $2,700 on top of the duty and interest.
Now scale it. An importer moving 200 similar shipments a year would have underpaid roughly $270,000 in duty in one year, and the lookback period is generally five years. What began as a small mistake in each entry becomes a seven-figure exposure. The example is also a reminder that fixing the problem starts with information from outside the customs team: engineering, finance, legal and sourcing all hold pieces of the valuation.
The 2026 Enforcement Climate
The reason to take valuation seriously now is not only that the rules exist but that the ability to enforce them has grown. CBP’s data analytics compare declared values against price benchmarks, prior entries, supplier histories and trade statistics, which means outliers that once sat unnoticed are now surfaced automatically. Industry commentary on the June 2026 executive order describes a push toward tougher importer eligibility standards, higher penalty floors and broader surveillance, and names undervaluation, split invoicing and unsupported origin claims as priority targets. Readers should confirm the current status of any specific measure with their customs counsel, but the practical message for importers is consistent across sources.
Many companies restructured their entry practices after the 2025 tariff increases, and some of those changes were legitimate, while others were not. Splitting an invoice into a low-value goods invoice and a separate “service” invoice, paying part of the price through a related company, or describing a bundled price as a lower FOB value without evidence are all patterns that data analysts now know how to look for. For low-value e-commerce parcels, the end of duty-free de minimis treatment in 2025 has also made every parcel-level declaration a duty-bearing one, so the incentive to undervalue has grown at the same time as the risk of detection.
The financial consequences are set by 19 U.S.C. 1592, which penalizes material false statements or omissions made through fraud, gross negligence or negligence. The table below summarizes the maximum penalty tiers and the effect of a voluntary prior disclosure.
| Culpability level | Максималды айыппұл | Effect of a valid prior disclosure |
| Немқұрайлылық | The lesser of the domestic value of the goods or twice the lost duties | Generally interest on the unpaid duties only |
| Өрескел немқұрайлылық | The lesser of the domestic value or four times the lost duties | Generally interest on the unpaid duties only |
| Алаяқтық | Up to the domestic value of the merchandise | Repayment of the duties plus interest, with a penalty of 100 percent of the lost duties |
Two lessons follow from that table. Importers are expected to use reasonable care when making an entry, and lack of internal communication is not a defense that customs regulators take kindly. Also, the best time to fix an error is before customs finds it, because a properly filed prior disclosure changes the penalty math dramatically.
Building a Defensible Valuation Process
A strong valuation program is less about knowing every rule than about having a repeatable routine that captures the facts. The starting point is a valuation questionnaire for each supplier and product family that asks the questions the statute asks: Is the seller related? Does the buyer provide tooling, materials, design work or other help? Is any royalty or license fee payable, and to whom? Are commissions paid, and to whom? Does the price include freight, insurance or duties? The answers should be reviewed at least annually and whenever a contract changes.
Once the facts are known, they need to flow into entries. That means giving your forwarder and broker the assist schedules, royalty rates and commission data rather than just the supplier invoice, and insisting that invoices itemize freight, insurance and any other component that is meant to be deducted. It also means reconciling entries against accounting records on a regular basis. A monthly comparison of declared values against the accounts payable ledger, royalty statements and tooling purchase orders will find gaps quickly, and the fix is far cheaper than an audit.
| Құжат | Why it supports the declared value |
| Commercial invoice and purchase order | Shows the agreed price, terms of sale and Incoterm |
| Төлемді растайтын құжат | Confirms the price actually paid, including any indirect payments |
| Carrier freight invoice and insurance certificate | Supports deductions of international freight and insurance |
| Assist schedule and tooling purchase orders | Documents the value and apportionment of buyer-supplied items |
| Licensing and royalty agreements and statements | Shows whether royalties relate to the goods and are a condition of sale |
| Intercompany agreements and pricing policy | Supports arm’s-length pricing in related-party sales |
| First sale invoices, title and payment evidence | Substantiates the multi-tier transaction if first sale is claimed |
When a mistake is found, treat it as an operational event rather than a crisis. Depending on the timing and the entry status, the fix may be a post summary correction, a protest or a prior disclosure, and the decision should be made with a customs attorney or licensed customs broker in the room. Importers should also review their record retention periods, since customs typically expects entry documents to be available for five years from the date of entry.
Finally, training matters more than most companies assume. Engineers who understand why the mold they ship to a factory has customs consequences, and finance staff who know that a royalty payment can affect duty, will alert the customs team without being asked. That single cultural shift resolves more valuation risk than any spreadsheet.
How Topway Shipping Supports Accurate Customs Value
Since 2010, Topway Shipping, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, has been a professional provider of cross-border e-commerce logistics solutions. Our founding team has over 15 years of experience in international logistics and customs clearance, with a strong focus on China–U.S. transportation. That background matters for valuation because most declared-value problems are not created at the border. They are created upstream, in the way documents are prepared at origin, and they are magnified when the first-leg carrier, the overseas warehouse and the clearance agent each see a different version of the shipment.
Our services span the entire logistics chain, including first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing, customs clearance and last-mile delivery, and we also offer flexible full-container-load (FCL) and less-than-container-load (LCL) ocean freight services from China to major ports worldwide. Because one team handles the chain, we can keep freight charges itemized separately from goods value, align the commercial invoice, packing list and bill of lading before the cargo leaves China, and make sure the documents that customs sees match the ones that finance and the warehouse hold. For FCL and LCL shippers, that means the ocean freight and insurance lines that support a deduction are ready when the entry is prepared, not reconstructed later.
We also work with clients ahead of their first shipment to identify the facts that change value: tooling sent to factories, royalty arrangements, agent commissions, delivered-price quotations and related-party structures. Final responsibility for the declared value always rests with the importer of record, and we do not replace advice from a customs attorney on complex questions such as first sale or royalties. What we can do is make sure that the facts are visible and consistent across the supply chain so that whoever signs the entry is working with the full picture.
қорытынды
Customs value is not the invoice total. It is a structured calculation that begins with the price actually paid or payable, adds packing costs, selling commissions, assists, royalties and certain resale proceeds, and subtracts properly documented items such as international freight, insurance and post-importation charges. Related-party pricing and first sale claims add further layers of proof. The importer who treats the invoice as the final answer will eventually run into an entry review, a CF-28 or an audit, and the cost of a misstatement is measured in duties, interest, penalties and disrupted cargo, going back years.
The good news is that valuation accuracy is a process problem with a process solution. Ask the right questions of every supplier, collect the documents that answer them, ensure freight and other deductible items are itemized, reconcile entries with your accounting records, and fix errors early. With enforcement attention rising in 2026, a well-documented valuation file is one of the cheapest forms of insurance a cross-border business can buy, and a logistics partner who understands the documentation trail can make the process considerably lighter.
Жиі қойылатын сұрақтар
Q: Can I declare the amount on the commercial invoice as my customs value?
A: Only if the invoice price equals the correct transaction value. In many cases it does not, because the invoice may include international freight and insurance that should be deducted, or may exclude assists, royalties, commissions and packing costs that must be added. The invoice is the starting point for the calculation, not the conclusion.
Q: Do I have to add the cost of a mold I send to my factory?
A: Yes. Tooling, molds and dies supplied by the buyer free or at reduced cost are assists, and their value must be added to the price paid, apportioned reasonably across the goods they help produce. Engineering or design work done inside the United States is treated differently, but the same work done abroad can qualify as an assist.
Q: Is international freight part of the customs value in the U.S.?
A: Generally not. The U.S. excludes international freight and insurance if they are identified separately and documented. Many other countries, including the EU and China, include them, so the same shipment can have a different declared value depending on the destination.
Q: Is first sale valuation legal?
A: Yes, when its strict requirements are met, and it is recognized by U.S. case law and CBP guidance. It is also under increased scrutiny in 2026, and legislation has been proposed to end it, so importers using it should keep full documentation and monitor developments with their customs counsel.
Q: What should I do if I discover I under-declared value in the past?
A: Speak with a customs attorney or licensed customs broker promptly. A properly made prior disclosure, filed before customs begins an investigation, can substantially reduce penalties compared with waiting to be found.
