What is CIF value in customs?
CIF stands for cost, insurance and freight. As a customs term it means the value your duty is calculated on includes what you paid for the goods plus what it cost to get them to the border of the importing country. FOB is the alternative and it stops at the exporter's side.
Which one your destination uses is not a detail. It changes the base that every percentage is applied to, and on a consignment where freight is a large share of the total it changes the bill noticeably.
The two bases, and the gap between them
Under a CIF basis, the international freight and the cargo insurance are inside the number customs multiplies by your duty rate. Under an FOB basis they are outside it, and only the price of the goods themselves is dutiable.
The gap is widest exactly where importers pay least attention: small, heavy or urgent shipments, where air freight can be a third of the total landed value. On a container of high-value goods the difference is a rounding error. On a pallet of spare parts flown in, it is not.
The Incoterm is not the customs rule
CIF is also an Incoterm, which is a commercial agreement between buyer and seller about who arranges and pays for carriage and insurance. The two uses share a name and answer different questions.
Your contract can be on any Incoterm you like and it does not change how the destination values your goods. Buying on an FOB contract into a country that values on a CIF basis does not make the freight non-dutiable; it just means you paid the carrier directly.
Getting the value right on the paperwork
Where freight is dutiable it has to be declared, and where it is not it has to be separately identified to be excluded. A single all-in figure on an invoice will generally be treated as entirely dutiable, because customs cannot deduct a component nobody has shown them.
Insurance follows the same logic. If it is not itemised it is not separable, and an unstated insurance cost is not the same as no insurance cost as far as a valuation officer is concerned.
How this site handles it
Each destination this site prices carries a recorded valuation basis with the legal provision it comes from, and the calculator applies that market's basis rather than one rule everywhere. The example below shows which figures fall inside the dutiable value for the destination named.
Where a market's basis differs between duty and consumption tax, both are applied as recorded. Several countries charge duty on one base and tax on another, and averaging them would be wrong in both directions.
Assists, royalties and the things buyers forget to declare
The dutiable value is not only the invoice and the carriage. If you supplied the manufacturer with tooling, moulds, design work or materials free of charge, the value of those contributions belongs in the customs value too. They are known as assists, and omitting them understates the declaration whether or not anybody intended to.
Royalties and licence fees that the buyer must pay as a condition of sale go in as well. Selling commissions do, buying commissions generally do not, and the distinction turns on whose agent the intermediary actually is. None of this is exotic on branded goods, and it is the part of valuation that post-clearance audits look at first.
A worked example
Household textiles into the United States, where the valuation rule this site records excludes the international carriage from the dutiable value.
| Goods value on the invoice | 900.00 |
| International freight | 250.00 |
| Cargo insurance | 20.00 |
| Value the duty is charged on (FOB basis) | 900.00 |
| Duty at 9.1% | 81.90 |
| United States charges no consumption tax at the border | 0.00 |
| Total, before commercial charges | 1,251.90 |
| Estimate uses the US customs valuation method, which excludes international freight and insurance from the dutiable value. 19 U.S.C. 1401a(b)(4)(A) and 19 CFR 152.103: transaction value is exclusive of costs incident to the international shipment, where those charges are separately identified. Rate last verified 2026-08-30. | |
Send the same invoice to a destination that values on a CIF basis and the dutiable figure rises by the freight and insurance shown above.
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