Duty gets all the attention. Brokerage fees quietly do more damage.

When a cross-border parcel clears customs, the carrier does two things you get billed for separately: it files an entry with the customs authority, and it fronts the duty and tax on your behalf. The first is an entry preparation fee. The second is a disbursement — or advancement — fee. Neither has anything to do with transportation, and neither appears on the rate card you negotiated.

Before August 2025, most e-commerce sellers never saw these lines. The $800 de minimis threshold meant low-value parcels entered the United States free of duty and free of formal entry. That exemption is gone for all countries, and Congress has repealed Section 321 for all commercial shipments effective July 1, 2027. Every commercial package now generates an entry — which means every commercial package now generates a brokerage fee.

Here is what those fees look like in 2026, and where the leverage is.

The two fees on every cross-border parcel

Entry preparation fee

This covers filing the customs entry: classification, valuation, and transmission to the customs authority. It is charged whether or not any duty is owed. Carriers tier it by declared customs value, so a $60 order and a $600 order do not pay the same.

Disbursement (advancement) fee

The carrier pays the duty and tax to customs so your parcel is not held, then bills you for it — plus a fee for the service. It is almost always structured as the greater of a flat minimum or a percentage, which means small duty amounts are dominated by the minimum. On a shipment requiring $12 in duty, a $15 minimum disbursement fee costs more than the duty itself.

What the major careers charge in 2026

Across the three, the combined brokerage load on a typical parcel lands in the $20 to $30 range before any duty is added. FedEx raised its rates roughly 4% in 2026.

Now run that against a real order. A $75 apparel item shipped from the EU into the United States might owe roughly $12 in duty. Add a $9.75 entry fee and a $15 minimum disbursement fee and the customer's bill grows by nearly $37 — almost half the product price, and two-thirds of it is fees rather than tax.

All figures here are indicative. Actual charges vary by carrier agreement, service level, destination country, declared value and entry type.

Why this quietly destroys conversion

When brokerage fees are collected on delivery rather than at checkout, three things happen. The customer is surprised by a bill they did not agree to. A meaningful share refuses the parcel. And refused parcels return to you — where you pay return freight and, frequently, a second round of fees.

A refused $75 order does not cost you $75. It costs you outbound freight, brokerage, return freight, restocking labor and the customer. On a category with 40% gross margin, one refusal erases the profit on three completed orders.

Six ways to cut customs brokerage fees

1. Consolidate before the border, not after

Brokerage is charged per entry, not per item. Ten parcels crossing separately generate ten entry fees and ten disbursement minimums. The same ten orders moving as one consolidated shipment, cleared once and then injected into the domestic network, generate one. For sellers with steady cross-border volume this is the single available largest saving.

2. Use a licensed customs broker instead of the carrier's default

Carrier brokerage is a convenience product priced as one. You are entitled to designate your own licensed broker, who typically charges a flat per-entry rate rather than a percentage of duty. Above modest volumes the flat rate wins decisively — and the broker has an actual incentive to classify correctly rather than defensively.

3. Pay duty directly and kill the disbursement fee

The disbursement fee exists because the carrier is lending you the duty for a few days. Establishing a duty deferment or a periodic monthly statement arrangement removes the loan, and with it the fee. Percentage-based disbursement charges disappear entirely for sellers who set this up.

4. Ship DDP with landed cost quoted at checkout

Delivered Duty Paid does not make the fees vanish, but it moves them to where they do no damage: into a transparent checkout total the customer accepts before ordering. It eliminates refusals and doorstep disputes. The cost becomes a known, priceable input instead of a random post-sale liability.

5. Get classification right the first time

Misclassification triggers reclassification, and reclassification triggers additional entry work and additional fees — on top of duty exposure. Misclassification errors account for 42% of all CBP penalty assessments, and CBP can reclaim duties going back five years from the entry date. Correct HS codes are a fee-avoidance measure long before they are a compliance measure.

6. Reprice, do not absorb

If cross-border brokerage adds an average of $25 per order and international is 20% of your volume, that is $5 of true cost per order across the whole book. Sellers who quietly absorb it are running a loss-making international channel while believing it is profitable. Model it, then price it.

Check what you are already being charged

Before optimizing anything, pull three months of carrier invoices and isolate the brokerage lines. Two questions matter:

• Are entry fees being charged at the correct value tier? Overtiering is common on multi-piece shipments.
• Are you being charged a disbursement fee on shipments where no duty was actually advanced? This happens more than it should, and it is disputable.

Both UPS and FedEx have formal dispute channels for customs billing, and incorrectly applied fees are routinely reversed when challenged with the entry documentation.

The bottom line

Customs brokerage fees are no longer an edge case for a handful of high-value shipments. With de minimis gone, they are a per-order cost on every commercial parcel you send across a border. Sellers who consolidate entries, appoint their own broker, pay duty directly and quote landed cost at checkout are running the same international business at a materially lower cost than sellers who accept the carrier default.

Ready to see what your cross-border shipments should actually cost? Get a shipping comparison at HereWeShip and find out how much of your international bill is freight — and how much is fees you can remove.