Heavy Taxation Hits Online Shopping as Sri Lanka Scraps Tax-Free Imports
- CNL Reporter
- August 5, 2025
- News
- Tax-Free
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Sri Lanka is now charging all taxes on foreign parcels coming from online platforms and backlogs have also been cleared, without any de minimis exemptions being given Customs officials said.
“We have cleared all the backlogs,” Additional Customs Director General, Seevali Arukgoda told the parliament’s Committee on Public Finance.
“At the moment individual items are charged on the HS Code. We gave technical advice to the companies that are importing. Now they are being cleared daily.
Before the crisis about 1 to 2 billion rupees of revenues was earned and about 4 to 5 tonnes arrived daily, another customs official said.
Daily shipments have stopped and now shipments are coming weekly about three times, he said.“They have minimized costs and changed their strategies,” the person said.He said there the backlog was partly due to a delay in the relevant companies getting approval from their platforms to pay the higher taxes.
Platforms like AliExpress which stopped low cost shipping to Sri Lanka after the change in customs procedure and the cost of shipping a key cap to Sri Lanka was listed at over 17,000 rupees as of August 05.
