You put a pair of trainers in a cart from an overseas seller. They cost S$390, shipping is S$35, and you know Singapore taxes imported goods above S$400. So you are under the line, and nothing awkward happens at the door.
Except that S$400 is not one line. Three parties will check your parcel against it, and they are not looking at the same number when they do.
The three tests
| Who applies it | To what | Includes shipping? |
|---|---|---|
| The overseas seller, deciding whether your parcel is a low-value good | sales value of the item | no |
| The same seller, computing the GST to charge you | value of the supply | yes |
| Customs, deciding whether relief applies at the border | CIF — cost, insurance, freight | yes |
Two of those tests decide whether you are charged at all — one at checkout, one again at the border — and because they read different inputs, a parcel can sit under the line for one and over it for the other.
What that costs, using the tax authority's own example
IRAS publishes the setup in its e-Tax Guide. It does not publish the money, so here it is:
sales value — the entry-value test S$390.00 390 ≤ 400, a low-value good
value of supply — the GST base 390 + 35 = S$425.00
GST charged by the seller at 9% 0.09 × 425 = S$38.25
CIF at the border 390 + 35 = S$425.00
425 > 400, relief unavailable
import GST if relief is not claimed at 9% 0.09 × 425 = S$38.25
--------------------------------------------------------------------
total GST borne, worst case S$76.50
effective rate on S$390 of goods 76.50 / 390 = 19.62%⚠️ A headline rate of 9% has produced an effective rate of 19.62% on goods that never leave the "low-value" category on the test which defines that term.
The margin is thinner than it looks, too. On the guide's other example, a bag crosses the line on a 1.0% move in the exchange rate between order confirmation and import — S$398 is four tenths of one percent below the threshold, and a single day's currency movement is routinely larger than that.
Which basis applies is the seller's choice
The guide lets each vendor elect which basis it uses. Order the same goods at the same freight on the same day from two overseas retailers and the parcels can land on opposite sides of S$400, with neither seller doing anything irregular.
The double charge is preventable. Relief attaches where notice is given, and the Order requires that notice to come "by or on behalf of the importer" — the importer being you, the buyer. What the notice must carry is the seller's GST registration number and a per-item GST-paid indicator, travelling in the commercial document through the logistics chain. Only the seller and its transporter ever hold those.
⚠️ So the duty to notify falls on the one party who cannot supply the information it needs. That is how the Order is worded, not a description of how anyone chooses to administer it.
And it only covers post and air
The relief applies only to goods "imported by post or by air". Look for sea or land carriage in the Order and you will not find them restricted or given some other threshold; they are simply not there, in a text that uses the word relief dozens of times.
A S$50 item arriving by sea freight or over the Causeway gets no relief at any value.
What this does not mean
Nobody is being overcharged unlawfully, and each of the three tests is defensible on its own terms. An entry-value test has to use a number the seller already knows when the customer clicks buy. A GST base has to include everything supplied. Customs valuations have run on cost-insurance-freight for decades and changing that would be its own upheaval. The friction comes from one figure being made to serve all three.
IRAS is not concealing the mismatch either. The guide states it, gives the worked example that produces it, and prescribes the notification that avoids it. What it stops short of is putting a figure on the consequence.
⚠️ The figures above are a worst case. Double charging is what happens when the notification fails, and we did not measure how often that is.
What to do with it
Add the shipping to the price before you compare anything to S$400. Checkout may not read it that way; the border will.
On the parcel or commercial invoice, look for the seller's GST registration number and a per-item GST-paid indicator. The relief condition requires those two data points; if they are missing, the relief does not attach, as a matter of the Order's wording rather than goodwill.
And if the parcel is coming by sea or over land, stop applying the S$400 test to it. There is no relief on that route at any value, which makes a cheap item shipped slowly a worse deal than its price suggests.
Where this comes from
The relief item, its scope and the absence of any definition of "total value" were read from the GST (Imports Relief) Order, 2026 Revised Edition, gazetted 2 July 2026. The three tests, the election of basis and the worked setup are from IRAS's e-Tax Guide on taxing imported low-value goods, Fifth Edition, 30 January 2026. Every figure above is arithmetic on that example at the 9% rate in force since 1 January 2024.
This stops being current if the threshold moves, if the relief is extended beyond post and air, or when a sixth edition of the guide appears. The 2026 revision is current as at the date above.
