Gift relief is generous, but it is not a box you tick. This is what actually has to be true for a parcel to qualify, and the form that carries that claim.
| Gift value | Duty | Import VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Up to £39 | None | None |
| £39 to £135 | None | 20% |
| £135 to £630 | 2.5% flat | 20% |
| Over £630 | Normal rates | 20% |
Value here means the genuine worth of the item, in pounds, on its own, without adding the cost of postage. If you are sending something you already own rather than something newly bought, value it at what it is realistically worth now, not at what you originally paid for it new.
Every one of the following has to be true. Missing one does not reduce the relief; it removes it entirely and the parcel is treated as an ordinary purchase.
The one that catches people out. Buying something on a friend's behalf and having it shipped directly to them, then being paid back later, is not a gift. The recipient reimbursing the sender at any point breaks the relief, however the parcel is labelled.
Every parcel leaving the UK for abroad, or arriving from abroad into the UK by post, needs a customs declaration attached. Which one depends on the value:
Most personal gifts fall under the £270 line and only need the simpler CN22. Either form has a box or checkbox for marking the contents as a gift; that is what tells Border Force to test the parcel against the gift thresholds rather than the ordinary purchase ones.
Writing a lower value on the customs form than the item is genuinely worth, to try to stay under a threshold, is customs fraud, not a loophole. Border Force can and does open parcels and check contents against declared value, particularly around gift-heavy periods like December. If a declared value looks implausible for the item described, the parcel can be held and reassessed at its real worth, which usually means a bigger delay and a bigger bill than an honest declaration would have produced.
Border Force makes the final call on whether a parcel genuinely meets the gift criteria, not the sender's own labelling. If they decide it does not, for example because the value seems high for the stated occasion or the paperwork is inconsistent, the parcel is assessed under normal purchase rules instead: the £135 duty threshold and standard VAT, rather than the more generous gift bands. There is no separate appeal form for this specific decision; the recipient's options are to pay the charge as assessed or to query it directly with the courier or Border Force at the point of delivery.
A grandparent in Canada sends a £110 watch to a grandchild in the UK for a birthday, with the CN22 completed and the gift box ticked. £110 sits in the £39 to £135 band: no duty, but 20% VAT on £110, which is £22. If the same watch had been sent as a purchase rather than a genuine gift, it would sit under the ordinary £135 threshold instead and duty would still be nil, but the VAT treatment depends on whether the sender had already collected UK VAT at checkout, which a private individual sending their own watch has not done. The gift route is not automatically cheaper; it depends on the specific value and circumstances.
Our calculator has a dedicated gift mode that walks through the same criteria above and applies the correct band automatically.
Related guides: Buying from the USA · Buying from China · Buying from the EU · Courier fees compared · Bringing goods in your luggage