Written for an Australian shipper. The origin is fixed and the destination is the variable: the fee below is the Australian one because that is where you are billed, and the origin rules are the ones that apply to goods made in Australia.
Two trade agreements now cover Australian goods entering the UK, and both deliver a zero rate — so the choice between them is a question about rules of origin rather than about duty. Preference is never automatic: your UK customer claims it, using a declaration you write. And none of it touches VAT, which is owed at 20 per cent1 regardless.
Most guidance on this lane says some version of: there is a free trade agreement, so your goods are duty-free. That is close enough to be useful and wrong in three separate ways, each of which costs somebody money.
The bilateral agreement, A-UKFTA, entered into force on 31 May 20232. Less widely noticed is that the UK then joined the CPTPP, which entered into force between the UK and Australia on 24 December 20243.
That date is worth pausing on, because most published sources give 15 December 2024. That was the date for the first eight parties. For Australia specifically it is nine days later, and if you are citing an in-force date in a customs declaration or a contract, it is the wrong one.
You can see both agreements live in the UK's own tariff. On a cotton T-shirt, the tariff carries a 12 per cent third-country rate, a zero Australia preference from May 2023, and a separate zero CPTPP preference4 — two routes to the same outcome, sitting side by side in the customs system.
Since both routes end at zero, the difference between them is not the tariff — it is which set of origin rules your goods can actually satisfy5.
A-UKFTA counts content from one or both of the two parties6 — Australia and the UK, and nothing else. CPTPP counts content from across all its members. If you manufacture in Australia using Japanese, Malaysian or Vietnamese inputs, the same shipment can fail one origin test and pass the other. That is the practical reason to know both exist.
Whether your specific goods qualify under either is not a question a web page can answer. The agreement assigns a different rule to each tariff sub-heading — a change of classification for some, a percentage of regional value for others7. Cotton T-shirts need a change of chapter. Small passenger vehicles need 25 per cent regional value content. You have to look up your own code.
Before any of that matters, look up your commodity code and check the third-country rate. Plenty of goods already enter the UK at zero duty with no agreement involved8 — steel shelving, for one.
If that is your product, the agreements changed nothing about your duty and the origin paperwork buys you nothing9. This is the single most common thing we see people get wrong about FTAs, and it takes two minutes on the UK tariff site to rule out.
If duty does apply and your goods do qualify, note who has to act: preference is claimed by the importer, not granted automatically10. Your UK customer makes the claim. Your job is to give them what makes it possible.
And that is less than most exporters expect. A-UKFTA has no certificate of origin at all — a declaration you write yourself, in no prescribed format, on your commercial invoice, is the route11. No chamber of commerce, no stamp, no fee. If you are paying for a certified certificate of origin for UK shipments, you are buying a document this agreement does not ask for.
If you ship the same goods regularly, one declaration can cover up to twelve months of identical shipments12.
£1,000 and £135 are different numbers doing different jobs, from different legal instruments, and conflating them is routine.
Between the two sits a band nobody describes: a consignment over £135 but under £1,000 is liable to duty, can claim preference to bring it to zero, and needs no origin declaration to do it.
Worth knowing now rather than in 2029: the UK has decided to remove the low-value relief entirely, with new arrangements from March 2029 at the latest15. That is a decision, not a proposal.
This is where the money usually is on a pallet. Import VAT applies regardless of the duty threshold — £135 changes who collects it and when, not whether it is owed16, and the standard rate is 20 per cent1.
For a pallet, both thresholds are behind you and the practical question is cash flow. A UK VAT-registered importer can account for import VAT on their VAT return instead of paying it at the border, with no approval needed — but they have to tell the declarant before the declaration is filed17. After the fact is too late, which makes it worth raising with your customer before the goods move.
Two smaller traps in the same area. The £135 test uses intrinsic value and excludes freight — unless the freight is bundled into the price and not shown separately on the invoice18, so how you lay out an invoice can move a consignment across the line. And for direct sales at or under £135, the overseas seller has to charge and account for UK VAT themselves19 — a UK tax obligation created by shipping a small parcel, unless your customer gives you their VAT number.
It does not tell you whether your goods qualify under either agreement — that needs your commodity code and your bill of materials, and it is a legal test rather than a judgement call. It says nothing about agricultural goods, where the tariff outcome is staged and quota'd rather than immediate. It does not cover Northern Ireland, which has separate rules throughout. And it is not customs advice.
What would change the decision: your commodity code, first and above everything. Then where your inputs come from, which decides whether CPTPP's wider cumulation is worth using. Then whether your customer is VAT-registered.
We source carrier quotes and arrange the customs side. Customs gets contracted out rather than left with you — if you have no broker, Reddlaw assigns one — but Reddlaw is not itself a licensed customs broker20. The origin decision above belongs to somebody qualified to make it, and the answers you give us are what that broker works from.
On timing, a cross-border shipment targets three carrier quotes on an eight-hour window21, and that window is business time rather than wall-clock22 — roughly one working day. If the first wave does not produce enough, we run up to three waves before a person takes it over23.
What Reddlaw charges for coordinating the movement depends on the workflow and the operating volume, and is set with you rather than published as a lane rate. Carrier and provider costs are invoiced to you directly by each provider.
Two things we do not do: quote a transit time, and arrange cargo insurance, which we do not offer at this time24.
And to be clear about coverage: where we onboard customers decides where you are billed, not where your goods can travel25. This lane is one we write about because the customs answer is interesting, not because it is a boundary.
Every numbered claim above, and where it came from.