Jordan introduces new customs service fee on cross-border online shopping of clothes, shoes and few other products

Jordan Customs Authority last week has introduced new rules and custom service fee for personal online cross-border purchases of apparel and clothing, shoes, children’s toys and food items, made by citizens and residents in Jordan. Previously, the products purchased online from international ecommerce websites for personal use were exempt from customs fees.

Amazon (Global) and most of the other website don’t ship to Jordan but there are many third-party package forwarding services that have been facilitating these purchases through their online platforms. These online platforms including Aramex’s Shop and Ship provide users with a virtual address in the United States, United Kingdom or wherever the products are being purchased from that they can use when placing the orders. Once the products are delivered to this address, they’re forwarded to the customer’s doorstep in Jordan.

One of the leading platform in this space, CashBasha, that offers a lot more than package forwarding, has, in fact, shut down its operations in protest after the introduction of the new rules. We have a detailed story on that here. Now going back to what these new rules are.

According to an email sent by Shop and Ship to its customers in Jordan, all the shipments that are valued under JOD 50  (USD 70) will be subject to JOD 5 (USD 7) customs service fee and the customers are required to declare these purchases on Jordan Customs Authority’s new Arabic-only (yes, you read that right. It is Arabic only) platform. In case the customer fails to declare the shipment on the platform, they will be charged three times of what they’re supposed to pay as customs service fee i.e. JOD 15 (USD 21).

Shipments that are valued between JOD 51 to JOD 100 will be subject to JOD 10 customs service fee. These purchases are also supposed to be declared on the Jordan Customs’ platform. Failure to do that would mean paying JOD 25 as the fee.

The email also notes that the maximum allowed annual orders’ amount per person must not exceed JOD 500.

The Jordan Customs Authority platform requires users to share shipment tracking number, description of the items inside the shipment, name of website that the products were purchased from, shipment value, and shipping service, when declaring these purchases.