15 July 2026
By Bryan McCarthy
bryan@TheCork.ie

75% of the new €3 per item tax goes straight to Brussels

Since 1 July 2026, Irish shoppers ordering from outside the EU (which – since Brexit – means the UK also) have been hit with a new charge that’s quickly earned itself a nickname: the “Temu tax.” A flat €3 customs duty now applies to low-value parcels arriving from non-EU countries — and for anyone who regularly orders from Temu, Shein, Amazon UK or similar platforms, it’s already changing the maths on what counts as a bargain.

What’s actually changed

Until this summer, packages worth €150 or less coming into Ireland from outside the EU could enter duty-free under the so-called “de minimis” rule — a threshold originally designed to spare customs authorities the hassle of taxing genuinely trivial imports. That exemption is now gone for the duty itself (VAT was already applied separately). From 1 July, a new customs duty of €3 for each item in a parcel applies to goods bought online from non-EU countries, including Great Britain.

Crucially, the €3 isn’t charged per parcel — it’s charged per distinct item type, based on the product’s tariff classification. Revenue’s own example makes the sting clear: a parcel containing a notepad, a pen and a keyring counts as three separate items, and so attracts €9 in duty, not €3. Two identical cotton T-shirts, on the other hand, count as a single item and are charged just once. Even similar-looking goods can be split apart by the rules if they fall under different customs codes — a parcel with one silk blouse and two wool blouses is treated as two distinct items and charged €6, because silk and wool sit under different tariff headings.

For a typical multi-item Temu or Shein basket — a phone case, a T-shirt, a pair of earphones, a kitchen gadget — that can mean four separate €3 charges before VAT is even added.

Why it exists

This isn’t an Irish government initiative; it’s an EU-wide measure, agreed by the Council of the EU and rolled out simultaneously across all member states. The trigger was the sheer scale of low-value parcels flooding into the bloc — an estimated 4.6 billion of them in 2024 alone, more than 145 every second, with the vast majority originating in China. The Council has argued that duty-free treatment of these parcels has left EU retailers competing on an uneven footing, while also creating gaps in product-safety enforcement, opening the door to fraud, and adding to the environmental cost of shipping vast numbers of individual packages.

The €3 duty is explicitly framed as a stopgap. It’s due to run only until 1 July 2028, giving the EU time to finish building a centralised customs IT system — the EU Customs Data Hub — after which low-value imports will move to a permanent regime based on standard tariff rates rather than a flat fee. Those standard rates, depending on the product, could end up higher than €3.

Who collects it — and where it goes

Revenue is responsible for enforcing the charge in Ireland, but it isn’t an Irish exchequer tax in the way income tax or VAT receipts are. Customs duties collected anywhere in the EU are classified as “traditional own resources” for the EU budget: under the long-standing EU own-resources system, member states retain a share (currently 25%) to cover their collection costs, while the remainder is passed up to Brussels. So while the Irish Revenue Commissioners and An Post (if the seller has no direct arrangement with Revenue) handle the mechanics of collecting the money from Irish shoppers, most of it is destined for the EU budget rather than Irish public spending.

How you’re actually e charged

Retailers who are set up for it will add the €3-per-item charge at checkout, so the final price is clear before you pay. Where a retailer hasn’t done this, the parcel gets held at the border until the duty is settled — and in Ireland, that usually means An Post, which adds its own administration fee of around €6.95 on top, on behalf of Revenue. That fee has actually been in place since 2021 and isn’t new; it’s simply now being triggered far more often, because far more parcels now owe money.

There’s also a sting for anyone in the habit of ordering multiple sizes and returning what doesn’t fit: the customs duty is non-refundable unless the goods are actually faulty. Get a refund on the product, but the €3 (or €6, or €9) you paid in duty stays with Revenue regardless.

The bottom line

The tax, designed mainly to counter cheap Chinese imports is another wedge in commerce between Ireland and the UK

A €3 charge sounds small in isolation, but on a basket of cheap, varied items it adds up fast, and it applies whether the goods come from China, the UK or the US. Shoppers are being advised to check not where a website is registered — a “.ie” domain or euro pricing means nothing — but where the goods are actually shipped from, and whether the duty is shown at checkout before they commit to buying.