How to join Farmasi if there is no office in your country

South Africa has no de minimis at all: duty and VAT are chargeable on every import, whatever the value. SARS scrapped the old under-R500 flat-rate concession, adding VAT to it in September 2024 and reclassifying consignments into four WCO categories that November. VAT is 15%, but the base is uplifted: customs value plus duty plus 10% of the customs value. And there is a third layer most people miss — cosmetics carry an ad valorem excise duty on top of everything else, 7% on beauty and make-up preparations and 9% on perfumes and toilet waters. The gift rebate (two unsolicited gifts a year, up to R1,400 each) will not help you either: perfume is expressly excluded from it.

Paying is the easy part. The Single Discretionary Allowance rose to R2 million per calendar year in June 2026, and card payments for internet imports of up to R50,000 per transaction do not count against it at all. You need a valid South African ID and to be 18 or over.

No product registration was found for ordinary cosmetics; SAHPRA approval applies to medicines in the post, which is a different matter.

If you sell regularly, register with SARS. The ad valorem excise on cosmetics is worth factoring into your pricing from the start.

There is no de minimis for courier parcels in Kenya. The USD 500 figure people quote is a passenger allowance for accompanied personal goods, not for something shipped to you. Four charges stack on the CIF value: import duty under the EAC Common External Tariff, the Import Declaration Fee, the Railway Development Levy and VAT at 16%. EAC duties run from 0% to 100% and average around 25%.

Kenya repealed exchange control law in 1993 and runs a market-determined rate. Up to USD 10,000 can be exchanged without documentation, so paying a US site with a card is straightforward.

This is Kenya's sharpest number. Imports normally need a KEBS Certificate of Conformity issued before export. Courier parcels below a value set by the KEBS Council are exempt, but that value is not published. Goods that arrive without a certificate go to destination inspection at 0.6% of customs value, with a minimum of USD 300 — which can cost more than the order itself.

Register with the KRA if you start selling regularly, and budget for the inspection risk on anything that arrives uncertified.

The ECOWAS Common External Tariff applies. Nigeria's effective import burden is heavy: the US government's own trade guide notes that tariff, levy, excise and VAT combined exceed 50% on more than 80 tariff lines. One piece of good news is that the 4% FOB import charge was suspended by Nigeria Customs after industry pushback.

This is the part that decides whether the whole thing works for you. Naira-card international limits are set by each bank, not by one CBN rule, and they have moved enormously: GTBank's cap went from USD 1,000 a quarter in July 2025 to USD 20,000 a quarter by August 2026, while other banks sit far lower. Check your own bank's current limit before you enroll, and treat a domiciliary or USD card as the reliable route.

NAFDAC requires registration of imported cosmetics before they may be imported and sold, and publishes dedicated guidelines for it. Whether a personal-use quantity is treated differently is not something you should assume.

Under the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, in force since January 2026, a small company with turnover up to NGN 50 million and fixed assets up to NGN 250 million pays no companies income tax — which makes formalising early unusually painless here.

Zimbabwe has one requirement that matters more than any duty rate. Cosmetics are explicitly on the CBCA list — HS 3303 perfumes, 3304 beauty and skin care, 3305 hair products all require a Consignment Based Conformity Assessment certificate issued before shipment, with no value threshold and no personal-effects carve-out written into SI 124 of 2020. A consignment that arrives without one attracts a penalty of 15% of CIF value plus inspection costs. One thing in your favour: cosmetics are not on ZIMRA's 25% surtax list, which covers foods, beverages, cleaning products, candles, footwear and appliances.

The traveller's rebate of USD 200 per person per month applies to accompanied goods only and expressly not to goods for commercial purposes, so it does not cover a shipped order. On currency, the legal position is genuinely tangled: the Exchange Control Act permits settlement in foreign currency until the end of 2030, while a 2019 provision making the Zimbabwe dollar sole legal tender was never amended.

The CBCA certificate is the sanitary and standards gate here, and it is enforced at the border.

Given the CBCA requirement, plan your ordering around fewer, larger, properly certified consignments rather than a steady trickle of small parcels.

Zambia has the most workable small-parcel regime in this group. Single postal shipments below USD 50, including freight and insurance, come in duty-free. There is also relief for non-alcoholic postal consignments under USD 1,000 sent to a private person for personal, non-commercial use — read that condition carefully, because it does not stretch to stock you intend to resell. Above that, cosmetics carry customs duty, an excise duty of 20% and VAT at 16%. No clearing agent is needed below USD 2,000 CIF.

The Bank of Zambia Currency Directives 2025 do not stop you paying a US website. All domestic transactions must settle in kwacha, with real penalties attached, but international transactions are expressly exempt. The practical consequence is worth internalising: you may buy in dollars, but you must price and sell in kwacha inside Zambia.

ZCSA runs border inspection against compulsory standards; confirm whether cosmetics fall inside that list before ordering at volume.

Register with the ZRA once you sell regularly, and build the 20% cosmetics excise into your pricing rather than discovering it at the counter.

Botswana is in SACU, so it shares South Africa's external tariff and the same ad valorem excise on cosmetics — 7% on beauty and make-up preparations, 9% on perfume — on top of duty. VAT is 14%, and the registration threshold is BWP 1,000,000 of turnover. Goods moving in from South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho or eSwatini carry no duty, which matters if stock is ever consolidated through Johannesburg.

Botswana abolished all remaining exchange controls in 1999 and took IMF Article VIII status in 1995. Paying a US site in dollars is completely unrestricted — there is no allowance to track and no permit to obtain.

This is Botswana's real advantage. BoMRA states plainly that there is currently no registration requirement for cosmetics to enter the Botswana market, and that its listing exercise is not a registration, certification or verification. Compared with Zimbabwe's CBCA certificate or Nigeria's NAFDAC file, that is a very short road.

With no cosmetics registration and no exchange control, the only real threshold to watch is the BWP 1,000,000 VAT registration line.

Jamaica has the most generous de minimis of this whole group: USD 100 FOB, and below it the Jamaica Customs Agency states plainly that no duties or taxes are payable. Note the cliff, though — above USD 100, duties and taxes apply to the full CIF value, not just to the excess. GCT is charged on top, along with a 0.5% environmental levy, a 0.3% standards compliance fee and a small stamp duty. Cosmetics escape Special Consumption Tax, which is confined to petroleum, alcohol, tobacco and vehicles.

Card payment to a US site is routine. The USD 100 threshold rewards ordering little and often rather than in bulk.

Labelling is enforced at the border here, and it catches US-packaged goods. Labels must be in English, and dates must be dd/mm/yy or yy/mm/dd — not the US mm/dd/yy. The Bureau of Standards Jamaica is known to block entry and sale of improperly labelled goods.

The GCT registration threshold rose to JMD 15 million of annual turnover in April 2025. Below it you register as a Registered Person and do not charge GCT.

Trinidad and Tobago is the only country on this list that taxes the act of buying online. A 7% Online Purchase Tax applies to goods purchased electronically and imported by air, and it is still in force — a January 2025 release granted waivers for specific goods only, not generally. VAT at 12.5% is then charged on customs value plus all duties and taxes, so it compounds on top of the OPT. Import duty runs from 0% to 30%, with most household goods at 20%, and freight sits inside the tax base, so cheap shipping matters more here than almost anywhere else.

The real constraint is not the law but getting dollars. The Central Bank has publicly acknowledged that demand for foreign exchange outstrips supply and that legitimate requests are not always met. Commercial banks have responded by cutting card forex limits — check yours before you commit to an order.

Confirm any product registration requirement with the relevant authority before ordering at volume.

Between the Online Purchase Tax, compounding VAT and a tight foreign exchange market, fewer and larger orders make more sense here than frequent small ones.

The Bahamas has the most product-specific duty schedule here, and it splits a beauty catalogue right down the middle. From Bahamas Customs' own brochure: make-up carries 35% duty, while shampoo, conditioner, hair dye and hair preparations carry 25% — and perfume, cologne and deodorant come in duty free. VAT of 10% is then charged on a wide base that includes duty, processing fees, storage, insurance, freight and the environmental levy. The processing fee is 1% ad valorem with a USD 10 minimum, which is what makes very small parcels uneconomic.

The Bahamian dollar is pegged one to one with the US dollar, so there is no conversion cost on the price itself. Exchange control still exists but has been substantially relaxed for ordinary spending since 2024; the Investment Currency Market premium applies to capital transactions, not to buying goods.

No cosmetics registration requirement was confirmed; verify with the relevant authority before importing at volume.

A Business Licence is required to trade. Given the duty split, the mix of products you stock changes your landed cost dramatically — perfume and deodorant are the cheap end, make-up the expensive one.

Bermuda is structurally different from everywhere else on this list: there is no VAT and no sales tax, so customs duty is effectively the only import tax, and the most common rate is 25%. The duty-free allowances — BMD 300 for residents, BMD 50 for visitors — are for accompanied personal goods declared on arrival, so they do nothing for a shipped order. No postal or courier de minimis is published.

Bermuda taxes the currency conversion itself. A Foreign Currency Purchase Tax of 1.25% applies to residents buying foreign currency from local banks — no other country on this list has that. The Bermudian dollar is at par with the US dollar but is non-exportable, so every cross-border purchase is a conversion event.

No cosmetics registration requirement was confirmed; check before importing at volume.

With no VAT to reclaim and a flat duty on the way in, your landed cost is unusually easy to calculate here — duty, the conversion tax, and shipping.

The CARICOM Common External Tariff applies, with duties running from 0% to 120% and averaging around 20% on most commodities, assessed on CIF value. On top of that Belize adds GST at 12.5% and an environmental tax of 3% on goods other than vehicles — that 3% is a Belize-specific line you will not see elsewhere in the region.

Belize still runs full exchange control. The Exchange Control Regulations Act requires Central Bank approval for foreign exchange dealings, and residents obtain XCH-1 permits for current transactions. In practice card purchases do work: the US trade guide reports that foreign online purchases are charged stamp duties and foreign exchange at the time of purchase, and that buying from the United States is commonplace, typically through a Florida or Texas freight-forwarding hub.

Confirm any cosmetics import requirement with the relevant authority before ordering at volume.

Most Belizean online buyers route parcels through a US freight forwarder, which is worth setting up before your first order rather than after.

The UAE de minimis is AED 300 per consignment, for courier parcels up to 70 kg — cut down from roughly AED 970 at the start of 2023, so older guidance you find online will be wrong. Above that, standard customs duty of 5% of CIF and VAT of 5% apply.

Paying a US site by card is routine and there are no meaningful restrictions to plan around.

This is the requirement that catches people out. ECAS conformity certification is mandatory for cosmetics, perfumery and personal care products placed on the UAE market, and an ECAS Certificate of Conformity from an approved notified body is required for customs clearance, valid for a year and renewed annually. Shipments arriving without one can be rejected, penalised or returned to origin. Dubai additionally runs product registration through Dubai Municipality.

VAT registration is mandatory at AED 375,000 of taxable supplies and imports over twelve months, and voluntary from AED 187,500.