Cyprus Customs Expect €15m Revenue from New Tax
The Cyprus Customs Department expects to generate revenue of around €15 million from a new tax on low-value packages imported from non-EU countries, starting from July 1.
New Tax on Low-Value Packages
A tax of €3 per item will be imposed on packages valued below €150, which are typically purchased online and were previously exempt from customs duties. According to the Customs Department, the tax will be applied per product category in each shipment.
Based on data from the Customs Department, around 3-5 thousand low-value packages (<€150) arrived in Cyprus every month until September 2025, corresponding to around 40-60 thousand shipments per year. However, this number was underestimated, as platforms could not submit declarations to the Cyprus customs system until September and instead submitted them to other EU member states, resulting in them being recorded as EU imports.
Increased Shipments and Revenue
Since October 2025, when the systems were upgraded, the Customs Department has been able to receive declarations directly from platforms, resulting in shipments being made directly from China to Cyprus. This has led to an explosive increase in the arrival of packages and the submission of low-value declarations, which are now accepted by the Customs Department's import system.
- From October 2025 to June, 2,556,326 packages valued below €150 arrived in Cyprus from non-EU countries.
- The number of low-value packages arriving in Cyprus has increased to 250,000-350,000 per month, with a slight decrease in April (188,000).
The customs spokesperson, George Konstantinou, noted that the workload for the Customs Department has almost quintupled since last October, with the expected number of low-value packages increasing from 60,000 to 3-3.5 million per year.
Country of Origin and Revenue Expectations
According to data from the Customs Department, 90% of low-value packages arriving in Cyprus originate from China, 5% from the US, 4% from the UK, and the remaining 1% from other countries such as the UAE, Japan, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Korea, and Bangladesh.
When asked about the expected revenue from the new tax, Konstantinou stated that if an average of 3-5 different product items are included in each package, this could result in an increase in customs duties of around €10-15 million per year, with 75% going to the EU and 25% remaining in Cyprus.