Show Duties & Taxes at Checkout

The biggest driver of international cart abandonment is a surprise customs bill. A customer orders, pays, and then gets a delivery fee demand from the courier for duties they never saw at checkout — and that is when they abandon the purchase or refuse the package. See how much of your revenue this costs in our guide to reducing international cart abandonment.

The fix is to sell DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) instead of DDU. Under DDP, you pay the duties and taxes and your customer sees one total price at checkout. Under DDU, the buyer pays the customs bill on arrival — the exact friction that kills conversions. For the full breakdown, see DDP shipping for Shopify merchants and our DDP shipping guide.

Shopify handles international checkout and payments for merchants selling to 200+ countries, but it does not calculate import duties or taxes on its own. Out of the box, an international customer sees the product and shipping total at payment, then gets a separate customs bill from the carrier after the order ships.

That gap is where international orders stall. When duties and taxes appear only after the order is placed, customers abandon checkout or refuse the parcel at the door. RateTell closes the gap by calculating the full landed cost for each product and destination and adding it to the Shopify checkout, so the price at payment is the price the customer pays.

RateTell installs on your Shopify store, classifies each product with an HS code, and collects duties and taxes at checkout. For the full picture, read our guide to Shopify international shipping, or estimate a product's duties with the Shopify landed cost calculator.