About GiftDuty

Giving a gift should feel generous, not fraught. Yet the moment a present crosses a border or a budget, the questions start piling up. Will the recipient get hit with a customs bill on delivery? Is the parcel under the duty-free gift allowance for their country, or over it? Does handing someone a large sum trigger a gift tax, or is it comfortably within the annual exclusion? How much of a company’s holiday gifting is actually tax-deductible? How do you divide a fixed budget fairly across a dozen people, and how much wrapping paper does a given box even need? None of these are hard once you know the method — but working them out by hand, every time, is exactly where the joy of giving turns into admin.

GiftDuty is built around that gap. Rather than long essays you have to wade through, the site is a set of small, single-purpose calculators, each aimed at one real decision. The Import Duty & Tax Calculator builds a landed cost from the customs value, a duty rate, and an import VAT/GST rate, in the order customs authorities actually apply them. The Gift Duty-Free Allowance Checker compares a gift’s declared value to a destination’s de-minimis threshold so you know before you ship whether charges are likely. The Gift Tax Threshold Estimator walks a monetary gift through the annual exclusion, the lifetime exemption, and an optional spousal split to show what, if anything, is taxable. The Corporate Gifting Budget Planner separates what a company spends from what it can deduct under a per-recipient cap. The Gift Budget Splitter divides a total across recipients evenly or by weighted tiers, to the cent. And the Gift Wrap Size Estimatorturns a box’s dimensions into the sheet of paper and length of ribbon it needs, so you cut once and cut right.

Alongside the calculators, the blog and learn section explain the reasoning the tools rest on — how a CIF customs value is assembled, why import tax is charged on the duty as well as the goods, what separates a genuine gift from a commercial parcel in the eyes of customs, and how gift and estate tax thresholds fit together.

A few things worth stating plainly. GiftDuty is independent and not affiliated with any customs authority, tax agency, courier, or retailer. It is supported by advertising, which is how the tools stay free with no account required. Every figure a tool produces — a landed cost, an allowance check, a taxable portion, a deductible total, a per-recipient share, a sheet size — is a general estimate based on the numbers you enter and on commonly used formulas, not a customs ruling, a tax determination, or legal advice. Duty rates, gift allowances, exclusions, and deductible caps differ by country and change over time, and the tools deliberately ask you to supply those figures rather than baking one jurisdiction’s law in as fact. For anything with real money or compliance riding on it, verify with the destination customs or tax authority, your carrier, or a qualified professional. If a tool looks wrong, or there’s a calculator you wish existed, the contact page is the place to tell us.