Selling internationally: currencies, duties, delivery and returns

A UK retailer can sell abroad from its existing store without opening a company overseas. What decides whether it works is the total the customer sees at checkout: a price in their currency, with duties and taxes included or clearly stated, a delivery promise they believe and a way to send things back. Get that right for one or two countries before adding more.

The rules moved a great deal in 2025 and 2026. The United States ended duty-free entry for low-value parcels, and the EU began charging customs duty on small parcels in July 2026. Both are still changing, so we state the position in October 2026 and say where to check.

It is general guidance, not tax advice. Confirm your own position with an accountant or customs adviser.

The short version

• Start with the countries already buying from you, and make one market work properly before you add the next.
• Show prices in the local currency, and decide whether to set them by hand or convert them automatically.
• Collect duties and taxes at checkout wherever you can, because a surprise bill on the doorstep causes refused parcels and chargebacks.
• For EU orders up to 150 euros, the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) lets you charge VAT at checkout, and a business in Great Britain needs an intermediary to use it.
• Every commercial parcel to the United States is now liable for duty, whatever its value.
• Shopify Markets, and equivalents on other platforms, handle currency, language and duty calculation, but they do not make you compliant on their own.

Where to start

Look at your analytics and order history for overseas demand you already have. Then check three things for each candidate market: whether your products are allowed in (alcohol, food, cosmetics and batteries are the usual problems), what delivery costs and how long it takes, and how the landed price (product, delivery, duty and tax) compares with local competitors.

Currencies and local pricing

Shoppers convert better when they see their own currency all the way through checkout. There are two ways to price.

• Automatic conversion. The platform converts your sterling price at a current rate, usually with rounding rules so prices look tidy. Quick to set up. Prices drift with the exchange rate.
• Fixed local prices. You set the price for each market. More work, but you control margin, can build in duty and delivery, and can match local price points.

We'd use automatic conversion to test a market and move to fixed prices once it matters. Include your payment provider's conversion fee in the margin.

Duties and taxes at checkout

Two terms run through everything here. DDP (delivered duty paid) means you collect duty and tax at checkout and the parcel arrives with nothing to pay. DDU or DAP means the customer is asked to pay on delivery, usually with a carrier handling fee on top. DDP generates far fewer refused parcels and complaints. To calculate it you need a commodity (HS) code and a country of origin on every product.

UK VAT on exports

Goods sent from Great Britain to a customer outside the UK can usually be zero-rated for UK VAT, provided you hold evidence that they left the country. HMRC's guidance on exports says you must get that evidence within three months of the sale. Make sure your platform is not charging UK VAT on export orders.

Selling to the EU: IOSS and the small-parcel duty

For consignments worth up to 150 euros sold to EU consumers, the EU's Import One Stop Shop lets you charge the customer's local VAT at checkout and report it on one monthly return. HMRC's guidance states that businesses outside the EU and Northern Ireland, including those in Great Britain, must appoint an intermediary to register and act for them. IOSS does not cover excise goods such as alcohol and tobacco, or consignments above the limit. Start with the gov.uk eligibility check.

Customs duty is separate from VAT. Until 2026, parcels up to 150 euros entered the EU free of customs duty. From 1 July 2026 the EU applies a temporary customs duty of 3 euros to low-value parcels, charged for each different type of item in the consignment (the European Commission's example: five T-shirts attract one charge, three T-shirts and a watch attract two). It is an interim measure, currently expected to last until 2028.

Above 150 euros, normal import VAT and customs duty apply. Under the UK and EU trade agreement, goods that genuinely originate in the UK or EU can qualify for zero tariffs if you can show origin. Goods you import from elsewhere and ship on from a UK warehouse generally do not qualify, which catches many retailers out. How the origin rules interact with the new flat charge is a point to confirm with your carrier or customs adviser, because the detail is new.

Two more EU points. The EU's General Product Safety Regulation, which has applied since 13 December 2024, requires a responsible economic operator established in the EU for consumer products sold there. And EU consumers have 14 days to withdraw from an online purchase without giving a reason.

Selling to the United States

For years, parcels worth 800 US dollars or less entered the US duty-free. That ended for all countries on 29 August 2025. US Customs and Border Protection describes the exemption as indefinitely suspended, covering all goods, all countries of origin and all shipping methods including post. A further executive order in February 2026 kept the suspension in place.

So every order you ship to a US customer is liable for duty. We are deliberately not quoting a rate: US tariffs have changed several times since early 2025, were the subject of a Supreme Court ruling in 2026, and depend on where the goods were made, not where they ship from. Check the current rate with your carrier or a customs broker, and ship duty-paid so the customer is not billed at the door.

Delivery and returns

• Offer a tracked, duty-paid service as the default, with a realistic delivery estimate.
• Decide your returns policy before you launch. International returns are expensive, and duty and tax paid on the way out are not automatically refunded. Options include a local returns address through a returns provider, a flat returns fee, or for low-value items a refund without return.

Our logistics team can help compare carriers and fulfilment options.

Translation and local content

English will carry you in the US, Ireland and Australia. For Germany, France, Spain and Italy, translate. Prioritise in this order: checkout and transactional emails, delivery and returns pages, product titles and descriptions for your best sellers, then everything else. Machine translation is a fair first pass, but have a native speaker review the pages that sell.

For search, each language or country version needs its own URL with hreflang tags so search engines show the right one.

How Shopify Markets and its equivalents handle it

Shopify Markets is built into Shopify. You set currency, pricing, language and domain or subfolder for each market. Shopify's documentation says selling in local currencies requires Shopify Payments. Its Translate & Adapt app will auto-translate two languages free. Duties and import taxes can be calculated at checkout if your products carry HS codes and a country of origin, and Shopify charges a percentage fee on orders where it does that calculation. The rate has changed more than once, so check Shopify's current page.

Managed Markets goes further. Global-e becomes the merchant of record: legally it sells to your customer, and it takes on tax registration, remittance and customs paperwork. Shopify's help centre lists it as available to select stores in the United Kingdom, on the Basic plan or higher with Shopify Payments, and quotes a transaction fee of 3.5% of the order (3.25% on Shopify Plus) at the time of writing (October 2026), on top of payment processing and currency conversion fees. That is a real cost, though often less than registering for tax in a dozen countries.

Common mistakes

• Shipping duty-unpaid to save effort, then absorbing refused parcels and return freight.
• Assuming goods shipped from the UK count as UK origin.
• Treating last year's customs rules as current. Check before each peak season.

How we'd approach it

We'd pick one or two markets from your existing demand, then model the landed cost of your top products against local competitors. If the margin holds, we set up the market properly: local currency and pricing, duty-paid checkout, HS codes and origin across the catalogue, translated checkout and emails, and a returns route. On Shopify that usually means Markets first, and Managed Markets once tax registration becomes a burden.

Then we connect it to the rest of the business, so overseas orders reach the warehouse and accounts correctly (see our guide to e-commerce integrations). If marketplaces are part of the plan, read multichannel e-commerce.

Questions we get asked

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