Two Ways to Pay Duty, and Only One of Them Comes Back

Ordering into Canada means choosing when to pay duty. One option is refundable on a return and the other is not. What to check before you order.

Ordering from a US retailer into Canada adds a line item most shoppers only meet at the door, and Urban Outfitters lets you choose when to pay it. The two choices look like a convenience question — pay now or pay later — and they are not. One of them is refundable if you send the order back. The other is gone the moment the courier hands over the parcel, whatever happens to the clothes afterwards.

Key facts

• Shipping to Canada: CA$15 standard (7–10 business days) or CA$29.95 express (5–7 business days)
• All orders shipping to Canada are subject to duties, taxes and other fees assessed by the Canadian government
• Import Fees prepaid — charged at checkout, total guaranteed, nothing due on delivery, and refundable if eligible on a return
• Import Fees due upon delivery — assessed when the parcel arrives and nonrefundable
• Returns within 30 days of delivery go back to the original payment method; after 30 days you get an emailed merchandise credit; after one year, nothing
• Mail returns use a prepaid Canada Post label with a CA$5.00 return fee deducted from the refund
• There are no exchanges. Items can only be returned for a refund; a replacement means placing a new order
• Canada Post charges a CAN$9.95 handling fee per dutiable or taxable mail item, separate from the duty and tax themselves

The two import-fee options are not the same deal

At checkout you pick a shipping method, and some of those methods have the import fees built in. Urban Outfitters describes the difference plainly on its Canadian shipping page, and the sentence that matters is short.

With Import Fees prepaid, an import fee covering duties, taxes and the related administrative expenses is added to the order total. Nothing further is owed when the parcel arrives, the total billed at checkout is guaranteed, and — this is the part worth reading twice — those fees are refundable if eligible when you return the items.

With Import Fees due upon delivery, you are responsible for everything the Canadian government assesses, it is charged when the parcel lands, and it is nonrefundable. Send the jacket back and you get the jacket’s price back. The duty, the tax and the brokerage stay where they went.

For an order you are certain about, the difference is mostly cashflow. For an order you are not certain about — a size you are guessing at, a colour you have only seen on a screen — prepaid is the option that fails gracefully.

🍁 See the Canadian shipping options at checkout

What the border actually adds

The Canada Border Services Agency does not assess duty or tax on mail items valued at CAN$20 or less, and gifts from friends or relatives valued at CAN$60 or less are exempt. Nearly any clothing order clears both of those bars, so duty and tax are the normal case rather than the exception.

On top of the duty and tax themselves, Canada Post applies a handling fee of CAN$9.95 per dutiable or taxable mail item — a charge for collecting the money, not part of it. Couriers levy their own brokerage fees on the same principle. That fixed component is why a small cross-border order can feel disproportionately expensive: the fee does not shrink with the parcel.

It is also the strongest argument for consolidating. Two separate CA$60 orders can attract the handling charge twice; one CA$120 order attracts it once.

The returns clock is a cliff, not a slope

The Canadian return policy has three states, and the transition between the first two is abrupt.

1. Within 30 days of the delivery date — refunded to the original form of payment.
2. After 30 days — refunded by emailed e-merchandise credit. The money does not come back; store credit does.
3. After one year — no returns or exchanges at all.

Note that the clock runs from the delivery date for online orders, not the order date. On a standard 7–10 business day shipment that distinction is worth roughly two weeks, and it runs in your favour — but only if you know which date you are counting from.

Returns can go back by mail or to any store in Canada or the US. By mail you use a prepaid Canada Post label with no postage to pay, but CA$5.00 comes off the refund, and processing takes two to three weeks from the day you post it.

👕 Check what’s in stock for Canada

There are no exchanges, and that changes the sizing strategy

The policy states it flatly: exchanges are not available, items can only be returned for a refund, and a replacement means placing another order.

Domestically that is a minor annoyance. Across a border it compounds, because the second order is a second shipping charge and a second trip through customs — with its own duty, tax and handling fee. The “order two sizes and send one back” habit that works fine inside one country is an expensive habit here, especially if the import fees were due on delivery and therefore nonrefundable.

The cheaper approach is to spend the time before the order rather than after it: check the measurements on the product page against something you already own, and read the fabric line, since an unlined knit and a structured woven in the same nominal size fit nothing alike.

The final-sale list is oddly specific

Some items cannot be returned at all, and the categories are worth memorising because two of them are easy to walk into:

• made-to-order furniture
• sale items bought at an additional sale-on-sale discount
• furthered sale items with prices ending in $0.95

That last one is a pricing convention doing the work of a warning label. A price ending in .95 in the sale section is telling you the item is final, and it is the sort of detail that never registers while you are looking at how much has come off.

A short checklist before you order

1. Choose a prepaid import-fee shipping method if there is any chance of a return. It is the only version of the fee you can get back.
2. Consolidate the order. The handling fee is per parcel, not per dollar.
3. Check the price ending. Anything ending in $0.95 in the sale section is final.
4. Count from the delivery date, not the order date, and put day 30 in the calendar.
5. Size from measurements, not from the letter, because there is no exchange to fall back on.
6. Decide how you will return it. A store in Canada or the US costs nothing; the mail label costs CA$5.00.

When ordering across the border is worth it

It is worth it when the item is one you actually want, at a price you have judged with the shipping, duty, tax and handling added — not against the sticker alone. A CA$15 shipping charge plus duty plus a CAN$9.95 handling fee is a real number, and on a single cheap item it can be most of the purchase.

It is not worth it as a browsing habit. The system is built so that a confident order is cheap and an uncertain one is not, and every uncertain order pays the border twice — once on the way in, and once again when the replacement follows it.

🛒 Browse the current Canadian range

Sources: Urban Outfitters Canada shipping information · Urban Outfitters Canada return policy · Canada Post, customs duty, taxes and exemptions · Canada Border Services Agency, importing by mail or courier