Maybe i can share a lil info about custom taxes and etc.
Any goods that is imported from overseas needs to be declared and hence, to be declared under what you call a tariff code. There are hundreds of thousands of tariff code in which to suit million of products that are imported in every other year. Anyways, these declaration are done by the forwarding guys at UPS in KLIA or whichever country entry point where a UPS specialist forwarding guy will be designating the incoming goods tariff code that is described in the invoice. How much tax we pay heavily depends on how this forwarding guy declares the tariff code but having seen the Custom 9 form, my very few kitbag purchases so far is declared accordingly and correctly. There is a few tariff code that was used, but unfortunately, all the very few codes he used were 30% dutiable. Rule of thumb is, any form of jersey or tshirt imported is taxable 30% and its not strictly 30% but 20% + 10% import tax and sales tax respectively.
And here comes the important part. Any goods with a declared invoice value of RM500 or lesser is not dutiable, irregardless of how high the actual tax, ie. 40% or 50% tax. So its safe to say that if your purchase value is below RM500, you won't need to pay any form of tax. I've heard of cases of some of us having to pay tax even tho the value is below RM500 so you can actually refuse to accept the package and you have every right to call up the UPS call centre, tell them your goods was wrongly taxed and you will want them to re-declare the goods and let them know the invoice is below RM500. You should not pay any extra processing fees.
But one thing for sure, 9 of 10 of us here would gladly pay the tax and sign for the goods and happily open the package to unveil the new jersey tho sulking over the 30% tax and the RM25 processing fees. Yes, 30% on the total jersey purchase may seem seem meagre and most of us just pay and go but there was once my company's product was wrongly taxed and we were facing a RM38,000 tax bill to be paid where in actualy, the tax amount was only RM4-5K. Obviously we got the forwarding agent to re-declare accordingly but what im trying to say here is that you can refuse to accept the package and tell them your items was wrongly taxed.
So to say that RM400 is a safe amount is not 100% right if by the law but if you've never been taxed at this amount, i'd say you're free to continue to buy at that limit but the fact remains, RM500 is the cut off point. Another point i would like to stress is your delivery address. Some of us register our workplace as the delivery address coz nobody at home during the daytime when UPS makes the delivery. The thing is, custom officers are ESPECIALLY alert when your goods are delivered to addresses like 'Taman Perindustrian Batu Tiga' or any address resembling a business operation simply because they have reason to believe the couriered goods will be re-sold to make a profit. Its roughly the same analogy as why authorities prefer to catch business premises using pirated Microsoft software where else home users are hardly penalised using them, knowing very well that home users are one of the biggest user of computer. That does not goes to say that you can buy lots of dutiable items, address is to your home and then sell them to make a profit. You may get off once or twice but you're never gonna be that lucky. But of coz the RM500 and below rules apply here so in other words, don't abuse the system. So if you're buying things online, if you have a choice, route it to your home address or your neighbour who's always at home. Routing it to your office only raise slight suspicion it could be traded to make a profit, and that makes them detain your parcel for tax purpose.
Hope my lil info here helps to answer any newbies who're curious and want to buy online. Its safe to buy, but don't abuse the system by buying small amount in each transaction but multiple times and then selling them slightly cheaper compared to retail outlet. If you're buying for friends, again, limit your transaction to RM500.
Happy online shopping!