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The Merchandise Processing Fee is priced two completely different ways depending on one checkbox: a flat $2.62 for an informal entry, or 0.3464% of customs value — with a $32.71 floor and a $634.62 ceiling — for a formal one. Guess wrong on a mid-size shipment and the fee you priced is off by $30, not by a rounding error.
Not a customs broker or compliance service. This page and the calculator it links to are not a customs broker, freight forwarder, or licensed customs classification service. Whether a specific shipment qualifies for informal entry depends on commodity type and your broker's own practice, not only on value — confirm which applies to you with a licensed customs broker or current CBP guidance before you rely on either entry type in your pricing.
Customs value — item cost plus freight to the US port or border, the same basis this calculator uses — at or under $2,500 is generally eligible for informal entry. Above that, a formal entry is generally required. A few commodity types (certain textiles among them) carry a lower threshold, and a broker can sometimes elect formal entry below $2,500 for their own consolidated tracking, so treat $2,500 as the general rule rather than a determination for your specific goods.
0.3464% of customs value is a small number until the value is large. Solved against the $32.71 floor, the percentage only clears it above about $9,443 of customs value — so every formal entry below that figure pays the same flat $32.71 the floor sets, not a value-scaled fee. The percentage does not start doing anything until a shipment is nearly four times the informal-entry threshold.
| Customs value | Informal MPF | Formal MPF | Formal − informal |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2,500 | $2.62 | $32.71 (floor) | $30.09 |
| $9,000 | $2.62 | $32.71 (floor) | $30.09 |
| $20,000 | $2.62 | $69.28 (0.3464%) | $66.66 |
At $2,500 and at $9,000 the formal-entry fee is identical — $32.71 — because both sit under the ~$9,443 crossover where the floor is still the binding number. Only at $20,000, well past that crossover, does the percentage actually exceed the floor and the fee starts scaling with value. Run either row on the calculator, pre-filled at $2,500 customs value and flip the entry type to see the $30.09 move by itself, with every other input held still.
MPF figures are the published CBP fee schedule as of this tool's last update and are indexed periodically — confirm current figures at cbp.gov before relying on them for a real entry.
Customs value is the usual line: shipments valued at $2,500 or less are generally eligible for informal entry, and shipments above that generally require a formal entry. Some commodity types (certain textiles, for example) have a lower threshold, and a broker can sometimes elect a formal entry below $2,500 for their own tracking reasons — so this is the general rule, not a determination for your specific shipment. Confirm which applies with your customs broker or current CBP guidance.
Informal entries pay a flat $2.62 regardless of value. Formal entries pay 0.3464% of customs value, but with a statutory floor of $32.71 per entry — and that floor is higher than the percentage would produce for any formal entry under roughly $9,443 of customs value. So a $2,500 formal entry does not pay a $2,500-sized fee; it pays the same $32.71 floor a $9,000 formal entry pays. The jump from informal to formal is $30.09, flat, no matter which side of $2,500 the shipment sits on, right up to that ceiling.
Not below about $9,443 of customs value — 0.3464% of any formal-entry shipment under that figure comes out below $32.71, so the floor is what actually gets charged. Above roughly $9,443 the percentage takes over and the fee scales with value up to the $634.62 statutory ceiling, reached around $183,200 of customs value.
No. The calculator this page links to runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, there is no account, and the optional usage counter only tallies anonymous feature events, never your costs, rates, or quantities.