Selling records to the EU after the new €3 duty

A UK seller accepts an order for a £14 record going to Germany. The buyer has already paid EU VAT through the Marketplace, the parcel is packed, and then the awkward question arrives: where is the new €3 customs duty meant to be paid?

One seller put it plainly in a Discogs Marketplace discussion: “How do we collect the €3?” Others have responded by removing EU destinations from their Shipping Policies altogether.

The confusion is understandable. This is not a Discogs fee, and EU VAT collected at checkout is not the same thing as the new duty. The law is common across the EU, but the practical route to paying the duty depends on the Marketplace, the delivery programme and the carrier.

What changed on 1 July 2026

The EU removed the customs-duty relief previously available to low-value imports and introduced a temporary duty of €3 per customs item in consignments with an intrinsic value of no more than €150. The measure applies to distance sales imported into the EU, including ordinary online purchases from non-EU sellers. It is currently scheduled to run until 1 July 2028, when normal tariff treatment is expected to take its place.

The European Commission’s summary is the best starting point. It also makes two distinctions that sellers need to keep clear:

• the €3 duty is separate from VAT;
• the duty applies per customs item, not simply once per parcel or once per physical unit.

This article focuses on the usual low-value business-to-consumer Marketplace order. Preferential origin, non-IOSS declarations, goods subject to restrictions and other customs procedures can produce a different result. If an exception may apply, obtain advice for that shipment rather than generalising from a Marketplace help page.

“Per item” does not necessarily mean per record

Everyday language is unhelpful here. A customs “item” is not automatically one object in the parcel. The Commission’s public example charges €3 for five T-shirts in one customs item, but €6 for a T-shirt and a watch because they sit in different tariff classifications.

The detailed Commission guidance is more precise: goods must share the same tariff classification, description and, where the declaration provides it, origin to form one item. The temporary duty is then calculated from the declaration lines, irrespective of the number of articles recorded on that line.

That means several copies of the same release may be treated as one customs item, but a seller should not assume that every group of records will be. Different descriptions, countries of origin or declaration treatment can matter even when every object is a record.

Who pays? There are three different answers

“Who pays the €3?” can mean three things, and much of the online disagreement comes from mixing them together.

1. Who owes the customs debt legally? The declarant is the principal debtor. For these low-value declarations, the Commission describes a hierarchy that normally considers the IOSS holder or its representative first, followed by other permitted declarants. The consumer is the declarant only in limited residual circumstances.
2. Where is the money collected operationally? It might be included by an eligible Marketplace delivery programme, charged when a duty-paid label is bought, settled through a carrier’s import process, or requested before delivery.
3. Who bears the commercial cost? A Marketplace may show it to the buyer at checkout, a seller may include it in the delivery price, or a buyer may face a carrier request later. That commercial outcome is not the same question as legal liability.

A useful shipping decision therefore needs more than “VAT paid” or an IOSS number. It needs a clear answer about the duty and the delivery service being used.

How the main routes differ

The important difference is not that one Channel is “compliant” and another is not. It is whether the selected sales and delivery route gives the seller a clear mechanism before the parcel leaves—and whether the buyer has already seen the resulting charge.

VAT paid is not duty paid

Discogs, Etsy and other Marketplaces already use IOSS to collect eligible EU import VAT at checkout. That helps prevent VAT being charged again at the border, provided the IOSS information is transmitted correctly. It does not prove that the €3 customs duty has also been collected.

This distinction matters because a seller can follow the familiar VAT process perfectly and still select a delivery service that expects the duty to be settled elsewhere. When asking a carrier for help, use the words temporary €3 EU customs duty, not merely “EU tax” or “IOSS”.

Five checks before accepting the order

1. Identify the route. Record which Marketplace, delivery programme and carrier service will be used for this order.
2. Inspect checkout evidence. Establish whether the buyer has paid VAT only or whether applicable import charges, including duty, are explicitly covered.
3. Ask the carrier the exact question. Is the service duties-paid or duties-unpaid for a low-value distance sale into this EU country, and what administration fee applies?
4. Send the right electronic data. Follow the Marketplace’s instructions for its IOSS number and provide accurate value, description, classification and origin information.
5. Set the buyer’s expectation. If a delivery charge remains possible, do not imply that checkout was the final landed price.

Before disabling the whole EU, compare the real cost of the workable delivery route with the margin and frequency of EU orders. For some occasional sellers, the administration may still outweigh the opportunity. For others, one repeatable process is less expensive than abandoning an established group of buyers. The useful decision is an informed one, not a guess made at the label screen.

Product identifiers change again on 1 November

From 1 November 2026, additional product identifiers become mandatory for distance-sale import declarations. The Commission’s guidance describes a merchant product identifier and a non-standardised manufacturer or product-supplier identifier as required, plus a standardised identifier such as an EAN where one exists. An exception code is available where no standardised identifier exists.

For a second-hand record, a seller may already hold several plausible identifiers: a seller SKU, a Marketplace or Discogs Release ID, a label catalogue number and sometimes a barcode. They do not all mean the same thing, and the Commission guidance does not provide a record-specific mapping. Ask the Marketplace or carrier which value belongs in each field rather than assuming that any convenient identifier will satisfy it.

This is the larger operational lesson. Customs processing now depends increasingly on structured product and order data travelling with the parcel. Sellers need those facts kept distinct and available even when different Channels ask for them in different shapes.

Final thought

The new duty is EU customs law, not a Discogs invention. What changes between Channels is the plumbing around it: what the buyer sees, who arranges payment, what data reaches the carrier and whether a surprise remains at delivery.

Do not switch off EU selling because nobody can explain the €3. Make each Channel and carrier explain its route before you post.