Hello, just to check with you guys about Kos Tambang Dagangan. As I understand it, if our items are delivered by private couriers such as UPS, Fedex, DHL, and the shipping/freight fee is not separated out and stated in the invoice, Customs will calculate our shipping fee based on the Jadual Kos Tambang Dagangan, which is about RM380 - RM 400++ for items coming from the USA. Is this correct?

I ordered a graphic novel from Barnes & Noble in the US, delivery via UPS. Item cost RM193, shipping RM80. However, it seems Customs used the Jadual to calculate my shipping fee and set it as RM480, despite the invoice clearly stating my shipping as RM80. The funny thing is, as you can see below, someone used a pencil/pen to cancel out the shipping fee of RM80 and replaced it with RM480. Same with the total CIF (RM274 to RM675) and the GST (RM16.50 to RM40.50).

Is Customs correct to add on the RM400 to my shipping fee? Or are they being sneaky and trying to charge me higher/unnecessarily? Seems funny to me that the system printed out the correct amount as per the invoice, and someone manually changed it by hand. I was issued an official Customs receipt for the RM40.50 GST, and I was also charged RM25 by UPS for brokerage fee.

Another thing is that my original CIF was RM274, below the RM500 taxable threshold. This exempts me from import duty, as stated in the document. Does this exempt me from GST as well? This seems to be the case as the final line at the bottom shows everything as 0.00, before someone manually changed it to the jacked up RM40.50 GST. Or do items below RM500 also get charged GST?

I'm thinking of going to UPS first to inquire about this, and maybe Customs too if necessary. But what I'd like to know before going is should the Jadual Kos Tambang Dagangan be used even when the shipping fee is declared properly? I'm afraid UPS/Customs will try to pull a fast one on me and insist that that is the case, when it should not be.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading.


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Thanks kherel77 and mastering for your replies. Very informative.

I actually bought two graphic novels from Barnes & Noble and they were sent out in separate parcels. The taxed parcel we're talking about was the first one to arrive. The second one arrived two days later also via UPS. Although the item and shipping cost are the same, no K1 freight charges were added to this parcel and therefore no tax was charged.

kherel77, if you're correct in saying that my first parcel should definitely have K1 freight charges applied to it, does this mean that customs was being lenient and closed one eye when they did not apply the K1 freight charges for the second parcel? I'd also like to add that I received a DHL parcel worth CIF USD95 (~RM400) a few months back and despite customs opening my box for inspection, they did not apply any K1 freight charges or tax as well. Were they being lenient as well?

I've attached below both customs slips. Sorry for the poor quality but the print was already pretty faded when I received it. I did notice that they used different tariff codes for both (4205.00.900 and 4901.99.000) but that should be irrelevant as it has no impact on the K1 freight charges.

Oh, and just to confirm. Does this Kos Tambang Dagangan apply to EMS/Poslaju as well?

Thank you very much for the info! I've always been a bit unsure as to how Kos Tambang Dagangan works and what little info on the Net about it wasn't very definitive, so this helps to clear things up.

I guess I won't be pursuing clarification from UPS now then, as my first parcel seems to be correctly taxed and I'm lucky that my second parcel wasn't.

Every shipment coming in? I was led to believe that Kos Tambang Dagangan only applies to express couriers like Fedex/UPS/DHL/Poslaju, and normal mail services from Pos Malaysia are not subjected to it. If really for all shipment, I'm guessing Customs is not that strict with Pos Malaysia and Poslaju, as I've received multiple shipments from them without any tax.

This post has been edited by rabbit.dynamite: Dec 30 2016, 01:28 AM