Is there a minimum value? Small parcels and the de minimis question
It is the first thing every seller asks, and the only question on this site with a one-word answer.
Updated 11 October 2026 · 5 min read
The question behind the question
When a French seller hears about an American safety agency, a certificate and a laboratory, the natural reflex is to look for the threshold. Customs rules usually have one: below a value, the paperwork does not apply. So the hope is reasonable, and it is worth answering properly rather than dismissing.
The carriers are the ones who answer it, because they are the ones who decide what they will carry. UPS publishes the sentence in the plainest terms available on this subject.
« CPSC electronic filing is required regardless of the value of the shipment, entry, or goods. There is no low-value or direct-to-consumer exemption from filing CPSC certificate data for products subject to CPSC regulations. »Why there is no threshold to find
The reason is that this is not a customs duty. A duty is about value, so a value threshold makes sense. A safety certificate is about a product: a lamp that overheats does not become safe because it cost twelve euros, and the rule is written about what the product is, not what it is worth.
« Mandatory electronic filing is not a change to what products and articles are subject to CPSC standards and regulations. »That second sentence is the one that settles most arguments. Nothing about which products are covered changed in 2026. What changed is when the data has to exist, which is why a seller who never heard of this before is not late: they are meeting an old requirement at a new moment.
The scale is worth knowing too, because it is finite. Both carriers give the same figure for the customs codes flagged for filing, and both warn that the list is a filter rather than the definition of what is regulated.
« Electronic filing of CPSC certificates of conformity (eFiling) becomes mandatory for 600 HS codes imported into the United States. »The exceptions that do exist
Two are worth knowing, and neither is about value. The first is the genuine gift between private individuals, which is not a sale and is outside the rule.
« eFiling of a certificate is not required for noncommercial products sent from one consumer overseas to another consumer in the United States, such as a gift. »The second is narrower and useful to a supplier rather than a shop: a part that is not sold to consumers as it is, but goes into further assembly or manufacturing in the United States.
« eFiling of a certificate is not required when the imported product is a component of a consumer product that is not packaged, sold, or held for sale to, or for use by, consumers, but rather the part will be used in further assembly or manufacturing in the United States. »What is not on that list is the small parcel, the single order, the first sale, the sample sent to a customer, or the shop that only ships a few times a month.
What the filing itself costs
Worth budgeting for, because it is the part sellers do not see coming: the filing is a brokerage act, and it is billed like the other agencies' filings.
« UPS Brokerage will assess the same PGA fee as is charged for other PGAs who require submitting data at the time of entry in ACE »And the cost of not filing is the one that grows. A held parcel is not a returned parcel: it waits, storage is charged while it waits, and the carrier warns of refusal and enforcement beyond that.
« Failure to submit required CPSC Certificate of Compliance data accurately and timely may result in entry delays, cargo holds, requests for additional information, refusal of admission, or enforcement action by CPSC or U.S. Customs and Border Protection. »What a small shop should actually do
The absence of a threshold sounds like bad news, and for the first product it is. For everything after it, the opposite is true: because the rule attaches to the product rather than to the shipment, the work is done once per product and then reused by every parcel, whatever it is worth.
So the sensible order is by volume, not by value. Clear the references that carry your American orders, and let the rest wait until they sell. And start with the free part: establishing whether any rule names your product at all, which is a question with an answer and costs nothing to ask.