A number that arrived too late

RC/TR/2026/T.13 · Letter from the table · 2 April 2026
Stance: Amend

To the Trade Council

At our most recent council session, I understood the Landed Cost Diary differently. I had thought of it as a place to record the final amount paid. I now think it must record something earlier: what a small trader was told before deciding whether to proceed, and what was still unknown at that point.

My case is from a shipment that arrived in Mexico City in December. On 6 November, before dispatch, I received an estimate of MXN 18,400 for freight and destination handling. It said that duties, taxes and customs-agency services were not included. I knew, therefore, that it was not a complete landed-cost figure. But the phrase “destination handling” seemed to cover the local charges that were hardest for me to anticipate.

Before the shipment left, I asked the forwarder for a fuller estimate. I supplied the declared value, country of origin and the tariff classification I had discussed with my customs agent. The response was that the final tax depended on customs assessment and could not be confirmed in advance. I understood the reason for caution. A freight forwarder should not promise that an authority will assess a particular amount. Still, I had no single document showing which parts of the cost were reasonably estimable, which were conditional, and which could change only after arrival.

The shipment arrived on 16 December. The additional amounts I had to arrange came to MXN 31,760: MXN 6,900 for handling, MXN 8,250 for customs-agency services, MXN 14,380 in import duties and taxes, and MXN

2,230 for storage. These were not all the same kind of charge. I do not say that they were all incorrect, or that the forwarder was responsible for every one. The import duties and taxes were not a freight fee, and the documents provided showed separate lines. But the gap between the estimate and the money required at arrival was large for my planning, even though I knew the estimate excluded some costs.

In Mexico, the import process has formal steps: the importer’s tax and registration position matters, and the customs declaration, or pedimento, records the import transaction. The general IVA rate is 16%, although the applicable treatment depends on the goods and circumstances. Those facts make a guaranteed total unrealistic. They do not make useful advance information unrealistic. I needed to know not only that taxes were excluded, but what information the estimate relied on, what the likely additional categories were, and what could produce storage or other charges while the declaration was being completed.

What I took from the session is that a landed-cost diary should not turn into a list of complaints about a final bill. It should let us compare the estimate and the outcome fairly. We need the date of the estimate, the shipment terms, the stated exclusions, the assumptions about classification and origin, and the date each new charge became known. We should distinguish a lawful tax assessed by an authority from a service charge set by a provider, and distinguish both from a cost caused by delay.

For that reason, my stance is amend. The proposed Small Importer Standard should keep its request for landed-cost transparency, but make the request more precise. Before a small trader commits, a forwarder should provide a written breakdown of known service charges and clearly label excluded or conditional items. Where it cannot calculate a duty or tax, it should identify the missing information or uncertainty and, if feasible, give a range rather than leave the trader with a bare exclusion. It should also say which party will notify the importer if a charge changes, and when that notice will be given.

The standard should not require a forwarder to guarantee a customs outcome or absorb a tax imposed on the importer. Nor should it treat every difference between estimate and final bill as misconduct. It should require a usable explanation and a timely update. For a small trader, the distinction matters: a cost may be legitimate and still arrive too late to manage.

I also support size-based thresholds, plain-language guidance and a phase-in when new trade rules or tariffs begin to apply. Small firms cannot maintain a specialist customs desk for every change. A clear transition period and a simple explanation of what records or registrations are needed would help us ask better questions before goods are in transit. In my case, the estimate was not wholly silent; the problem was that its exclusions did not help me see the likely cash requirement or the steps that could add to it.