Every international postal item carries a customs declaration. The CN22 covers smaller, lower value items and the CN23 covers larger consignments, traditionally above 300 Special Drawing Rights in value, supported where needed by the CP71 or CP72 dispatch note. The paper form on the parcel is now the visible copy of an electronic record sent ahead under UPU rules, and customs in the destination country risk assesses, and often taxes, the parcel from that data before it lands.
For postal traffic there is no broker filing a traditional entry line by line for most consumer parcels. The declaration data is what customs has: sender, recipient, contents description, quantity, weight, value, and the HS code where the form asks for it. Vague descriptions like gift, parts, or clothes fail modern screening, because the receiving administration and its security rules need to know what the thing is, and many destinations now reject or return items whose electronic data is missing or unusable.
Sellers used to treating the postal form as a label formality discover the change as return rates. An item returned for bad data costs the freight twice and the customer once, and the customer does not distinguish between the post, customs, and you. In their account, you shipped it wrong.
Where the destination taxes low value imports, the assessed amount starts from the declared value and contents. Undervaluation is not a grey area here: it is a false declaration, and postal administrations compare declared values against marketplace and payment data more often than senders assume. Itemised declarations, one line per distinct article with its own value and code, clear faster than a single lump description for a mixed parcel, because the assessing system does not have to guess how the total splits.
Gift marking deserves its old warning. Marking sold goods as gifts to soften tax is a misdeclaration, it forfeits the protections of schemes that rely on honest data, and in several markets it no longer changes the tax outcome anyway, because the relief it aimed at has been narrowed or removed.
Everything upstream. Capture the declaration data at checkout and order level, in the item master, not at the packing bench: accurate descriptions written for a customs officer, HS codes maintained per product, real weights, and values that reconcile to the invoice. Send the electronic data through your postal operator or consolidator and confirm it was accepted, because a label printed is not proof the data transmitted.
Then watch the exceptions. Returned and delayed postal items usually cite a data reason. Feeding those reasons back into the item master fixes the next thousand parcels, which is the only scale at which postal compliance actually gets cheaper. Confirm form thresholds and data requirements for your destination markets with your postal operator, since UPU and national rules are revised in cycles.
Related reading: What is a CBP focused assessment and how should a DTC brand prepare?, How does CBP decide which DTC parcels get inspected?.
Size, weight, and value decide. CN22 is the shorter declaration for smaller, lower value postal items, CN23 is the fuller form for larger consignments, generally those above 300 SDR in value, and heavier items may need the accompanying dispatch note as well. Your postal operator's system usually selects the form from the data you supply.
For commercial items, destination administrations increasingly require or strongly expect a tariff code, and the electronic data standards carry a field for it. A correct six digit code speeds assessment. A missing or nonsense code invites the delay or the guess you were trying to avoid.
Some destinations will not accept postal items whose advance electronic data was not received and validated, a policy enforced strictly on certain routes. The physical parcel can be perfect and still travel back. The remedy sits with the sending integration, so raise it with your postal operator or consolidator, not the destination post.
No. Postal is a transport and clearance channel, not an exemption. Duty and import tax are assessed from the declaration according to the destination's rules, and any low value relief that applies does so because the law provides it, not because the parcel came by post.