If your goods pass through a trading company or sourcing agent before they reach you, you may be paying duty on the middleman’s price rather than the factory’s. Enter your annual import value and effective duty rate to see what that difference is worth across a year.
The calculator is free and nothing is gated. If you want the result as a one-page PDF we will email it to you, and that is the only point at which we ask for an address.
This is a directional estimate, not a quote and not customs advice. Remora is not a customs broker. Any duty, valuation or classification position should be reviewed with your licensed customs broker before it is filed.
A trading company or sourcing agent buys from the manufacturer at one price, knowing the goods are bound for the United States.
You are invoiced at their price, and that is usually the value declared to Customs, so you pay duty on their margin as well as on the goods.
With the sale chain documented, duty can be calculated on the factory price instead. Every entry after that carries the lower value.
First Sale is a valuation method US Customs recognises. When goods pass through a middleman, such as a trading company or a sourcing agent, the duty can often be calculated on the earlier price the factory charged rather than the higher price you paid. The goods, the classification and the duty rate do not change. Only the value the rate is applied to changes, so the saving repeats on every entry rather than arriving as a one-off refund.
You need a genuine multi-tier transaction, the goods must be clearly destined for the United States at the time of the first sale, and that first sale has to be at arm’s length. In practice that means documentation: the factory invoice, evidence of the sale chain, and the vendor structure behind it. This is exactly the documentation most importers already have and cannot easily assemble, which is the part Remora automates.
The range on this page is 10 to 25 percent of the duty you already pay, which is the band we see most often. It is deliberately a range rather than a single figure, because the real number depends on how much of your volume moves through a middleman and what the margin at that tier looks like. An importer sourcing directly from the factory on everything will save nothing here, and we will tell you that rather than run a process.
No. Remora is not a customs broker and does not file anything. We assemble the documentation and the valuation position, and your broker reviews and files it exactly as they do today. You keep your broker, your bond and your relationships. Liability stays precisely where it is now.
Document storage is free forever, so you can centralise your invoices, entry summaries and classifications at no cost. The platform starts at $250 a month, and what you pay above that depends on which modules you turn on. We price it on a call rather than from a grid, because it depends on your volume.
Send us commercial invoices and a handful of entry summaries. Remora reads them, reconciles what you declared against what you actually owed, and shows you the gaps line by line against your own entries. There is no charge for that assessment and nothing to install.
Send your commercial invoices and a few entry summaries and we will reconcile what you declared against what you actually owed, line by line, at no cost. If there is nothing there, we will tell you.
Book a free assessmentDocument storage is free forever · platform from $250/mo · your broker still makes the call