Do I pay duty on coffee gear shipped to Canada?

The short version. If it comes by courier from the United States or Mexico and is worth $150 or less, no duty. Tax still applies over $40. From anywhere else, or by mail, the free allowance is $20.

Above those lines you can owe three separate things: duty, sales tax, and the courier's own fee for advancing them. The third is not a government charge, is often the largest of the three on a small parcel, and is the one nobody expects.

The thresholds, which depend on how it travelled

Canada does not have one free allowance. It has three, and which one you get depends on whether the parcel came by courier or by post, and on the country it was shipped from. These were set when the Canada, United States and Mexico agreement came into force on 1 July 2020.

Value	Courier from US or Mexico	Courier from elsewhere	Mail, any country
$20 and under	Nothing owed	Nothing owed	Nothing owed
$20.01 to $40	Nothing owed	Duty and tax	Duty and tax
$40.01 to $150	Tax only, no duty	Duty and tax	Duty and tax
Over $150	Duty and tax	Duty and tax	Duty and tax

Canadian dollars, on the value for duty. Source: CBSA, Increase to low-value shipment thresholds and other changes. A courier here means a commercial carrier running scheduled international transport, which is what UPS, FedEx, DHL and Purolator are. Canada Post is mail, and mail gets the $20 line no matter where the parcel started.

Two things about that table catch people out. The middle row is not "free": between $40 and $150 from the United States you still owe sales tax, and the moment tax is owed a courier has a reason to bill you for collecting it. And a $190 grinder is over every line in the table, so none of the allowances help at all.

Duty, tax and brokerage are three different things

Almost every argument about this happens because the word duty is being used for all three.

Duty

A tariff on the goods, set by their classification in Canada's customs tariff and by the country they were made in. It is the charge people expect and often the smallest of the three, because a good deal of household equipment is classified duty free. It is also the one that is genuinely hard to predict without looking your item up, which is the next section.

Sales tax

Five per cent GST federally, plus your province's share where it applies, charged on the value of the goods. This one is close to unavoidable above the thresholds and it does not depend on where the item was made.

The courier's fee

Separate from both, and not a government charge. When a courier pays the duty and tax to the government on your behalf and then delivers, it bills you for having done so. Each carrier publishes its own schedule and the shape is usually a percentage of the amount advanced with a minimum that applies to almost every small parcel, so a $9 tax bill can arrive with a $20 fee attached to it.

This is the one that produces the story everybody has: a modest bill for tax, a fee larger than the bill, and a driver at the door who will not hand over the box until it is paid. It is also the charge that is completely invisible at checkout on the seller's website, because the seller is not the one making it.

The rate depends on where it was made, not where it shipped from

This is the part that surprises people who thought buying from an American warehouse solved the problem.

The thresholds in the table above turn on where the parcel was shipped from. Preferential duty rates under the trade agreement turn on where the goods originated, which means where they were made and what they were made from.

So a grinder manufactured in China, imported in bulk to a warehouse in Ohio and then couriered to you in Ontario is shipped from the United States, which is what the $150 line asks about, but it did not originate there. Above $150 it is assessed at the ordinary rate for its classification rather than at the agreement rate. Most specialty coffee equipment is made in China, Taiwan or Japan, so this is the normal case rather than an edge one.

How to find the rate for your own item

We are deliberately not printing a percentage here. The rate depends on how your specific item is classified, and coffee equipment does not all sit in one place: electric grinders, hand grinders, kettles and espresso machines fall under different headings and do not all carry the same rate. A page that told you a single number would be wrong for most readers.

Two tools give a real answer:

The Canadian customs tariff, published by the CBSA, which is the authority. Chapter 85 covers electrical domestic appliances.
The Canada Tariff Finder, run by Export Development Canada and the Trade Commissioner Service, which is easier to search and will give you the rate for a described product and a country of origin.

If you want a single sentence to hold on to: on most coffee equipment the duty is small or nil, the sales tax is not, and the courier's fee is the one that makes the total annoying.

The American change you have read about does not change what you owe

There has been a great deal of news since 2025 about the United States removing its $800 de minimis exemption, which it did for China and Hong Kong in May 2025, for every other country that August, and made indefinite by regulation in June 2026.

That rule is about parcels entering the United States. It does not change a single figure in the table above, and a Canadian buying for delivery in Canada is not affected by it directly.

It affects you in one indirect way, which is worth understanding. It ended the economics that let overseas sellers ship single cheap parcels into North America without clearing customs each time. Sellers who relied on that have raised prices, moved to bulk importing, or stopped shipping across borders. If a store that used to be cheap suddenly is not, that is usually why.

What removes the problem entirely

Nothing on this list is a trick, and the first two are free.

Buy from a seller that already holds stock in Canada. A parcel that starts and ends in Canada does not cross a border, is not cleared, and cannot attract duty or a brokerage fee. Sales tax is charged at checkout the way it is in a shop.
Ask before you buy whether the price is landed. A seller that imports in bulk pays the duty once, on the shipment, long before your order exists. A seller that ships each order across the border cannot absorb that and generally does not.
Self-clear, if you have the patience. You can refuse the courier's brokerage and present the paperwork to the CBSA yourself. It works, it removes the fee, and it costs you a trip and a morning, which is why almost nobody does it twice.

Where Peaberry sits in this

We import in bulk with the duty settled before anything is listed and ship to you domestically, so there is no clearance on your order and nothing for a courier to collect. Sales tax is charged at your province's rate and shown before your card is. The shop opens in autumn 2026.

Tell me when it opens

This page describes Canadian customs and tax rules as we understand them on the review date above, with each factual claim linked to the authority that states it. It is general information about buying coffee equipment, not legal or customs advice. Rules and rates change; the CBSA is the authority and the links above go to it. If you find something here that is wrong, please tell us at hello@antipodetech.com and we will correct it and move the review date.