What Is a Customs Declaration? Forms, Cash Rules & Exemptions

A customs declaration is a document you give border authorities that lists the goods you’re moving across an international border, states what they’re worth, and identifies where they came from. If you’re a U.S. resident coming home from a trip abroad, you fill one out at the airport. If you’re mailing a package overseas or receiving one from another country, a declaration travels with the shipment. Customs officers use the information to calculate any duties or taxes owed, to screen for prohibited items, and to feed national trade statistics.¹

For most returning U.S. travelers, the first $800 of goods acquired abroad can come home duty-free; anything above that starts to generate duties that the declaration is used to calculate.²

Why the Form Exists

Customs declarations exist so governments can control what crosses their borders. Revenue is one reason: without a declaration, there’s no reliable way to apply the right tariff rate or assess fees on commercial shipments.¹ Safety is another. When you check the food-and-plant box on the U.S. arrival form, that answer routes you to an agriculture inspection meant to catch pests and diseases before they enter the country.³ Declarations also feed the trade data that governments use to track imports, exports, and the effects of tariff policy.

Not declaring something doesn’t make it invisible to inspectors. It just makes the outcome worse when they find it.

When You Need to File One

Coming Back to the United States

Every person arriving in the U.S. from abroad has to make a customs declaration, even if all you have with you is your own clothing. Families traveling together can file a single joint declaration covering everyone.⁴ You’ll report the total value of anything you bought or acquired overseas, along with food, plants, animal products, currency above $10,000, and any commercial merchandise.

Shipping a Package Abroad

If you’re mailing or shipping something out of the U.S., a customs declaration has to go with it. Through USPS, the only narrow exception is First-Class Mail International letters and large envelopes under 16 ounces that contain nothing but documents.⁵ Everything else — gifts, e-commerce orders, military mail — requires a completed customs form, and the data has to be transmitted electronically in advance.⁶

Receiving Goods From Overseas

When a package is shipped to you from another country, the sender attaches the declaration. If the shipment is valued above $2,500, or if it contains regulated or restricted items, a formal customs entry has to be filed on the U.S. side, usually by a licensed customs broker acting on your behalf.⁷

What Goes on a Declaration

The fields differ between the traveler form and shipping forms, but the core information overlaps.

On the U.S. traveler form (CBP Form 6059B), you’ll list your name, passport number, the countries you visited, your U.S. address, and the total value of goods you acquired abroad.⁴

For shipping declarations, the required information is more detailed:

Full name and address of the sender and the recipient.
A specific description of contents. “Clothing” is likely to be flagged; “men’s cotton polo shirt, size L” is not.
Quantity, weight, and value listed individually for each item.
The category of the contents: gift, merchandise, returned goods, or documents.
The HS code, a standardized six-digit number that classifies the product for tariff purposes. This is mandatory for USPS international packages.⁶

The Harmonized System code is worth understanding even for a single birthday gift. It’s a global classification system that customs agencies everywhere use to identify products and apply the correct duty rate.⁸ The wrong code can mean a package held up in customs or assessed at the wrong rate. USPS and most private couriers will help you look up the code during shipping.

How to Actually File It

Travelers

You have two options coming into the U.S. The traditional route is CBP Form 6059B, a paper form you can fill out on the plane or print in advance from the CBP website.⁹ One form covers an entire family.

The faster option is the Mobile Passport Control (MPC) app. It lets you answer the same customs questions on your phone up to four hours before landing, take a selfie, and submit. When you arrive, you go to a designated MPC line instead of the general queue. Up to 12 people can process on a single device.¹⁰ The app doesn’t replace your passport or any visa; it only replaces the paper declaration form.

Shippers

USPS customs declarations now have to include electronically transmitted data. You can’t just handwrite a paper slip and stick it on the box. Use Click-N-Ship, the USPS Customs Form Online tool, or approved third-party shipping software. If you’d rather do it on paper, complete PS Form 2976-R and take it to a USPS retail counter, where the data will be entered electronically.⁶ Private couriers like FedEx and UPS handle the electronic filing through their own shipping platforms.

The two standard postal customs forms are the CN22, a small label for low-value, lightweight shipments, and the CN23, a larger form for heavier or higher-value packages. Your postal service or courier will direct you to the right one based on the weight and declared value.

Reporting Cash Over $10,000

One requirement catches travelers off guard more than any other. If you’re carrying more than $10,000 in cash, traveler’s checks, money orders, or other monetary instruments when you enter or leave the United States, you have to file FinCEN Form 105.¹¹ There is no cap on how much money you can carry. The rule is only about reporting it.

Families have a wrinkle. If your family’s combined total exceeds $10,000, that has to be declared on the joint customs form. Any individual family member personally carrying more than $10,000 must also file their own FinCEN Form 105. Splitting money among family members so nobody individually crosses the threshold is illegal.¹¹

The penalty for failing to report is severe: a civil fine up to the full amount of the currency you failed to declare, plus possible seizure of the funds and criminal prosecution.¹²

The Duty-Free Exemption for Returning Travelers

Returning U.S. residents can bring back a certain value of goods without paying duty. For most trips the exemption is $800 per person. It can be $200 or $1,600 instead depending on where you traveled; the $1,600 figure applies to goods from U.S. insular possessions like the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.²

Family members traveling together can pool their exemptions. A family of four returning from Europe can bring back up to $3,200 in goods duty-free, no matter who actually bought the items.¹³

For goods above the exemption, the first tier is taxed at a flat 3%, well below the normal tariff on most products. Goods from U.S. insular possessions get a 1.5% flat rate.¹⁴ Above that flat-rate tier, normal duty rates kick in based on what the product is and where it was made. You can use the $800 exemption once every 31 days, and you generally have to have been outside the U.S. for at least 48 hours to qualify.¹⁵

What Changed for Shipped Goods in 2025

The $800 exemption above applies to what returning travelers carry with them. It’s separate from the rule that used to let low-value shipments enter duty-free, and readers often confuse the two.

Until mid-2025, a provision known as the de minimis rule (Section 321) let shipments valued at $800 or less enter the U.S. without duties. That rule was suspended globally by executive order in July 2025, and the suspension was continued into 2026.¹⁶ The $800 threshold is still in the statute, but the duty-free benefit no longer applies.¹⁷

That’s a real change if you order from overseas retailers. Packages that previously cleared automatically now face duties, taxes, and fees. For shipments coming through the international postal network, specific per-item duties apply based on the tariff rate for the country of origin.¹⁸ Shipments through express carriers and other non-postal channels are subject to whichever tariff rate applies to the product’s country of origin. Factor those costs in before you order.

Prohibited and Restricted Items

The declaration asks about specific categories of goods because some items are banned outright and others require permits or inspections. Errors here, even innocent ones, can lead to seizure, fines, or long delays.

Food, Plants, and Animal Products

Every fruit, vegetable, plant, seed, and meat product coming into the U.S. has to be declared, even if it looks harmless. CBP agriculture specialists inspect these items for invasive pests and diseases. Many fresh fruits, vegetables, and citrus are restricted or prohibited depending on origin. Seeds and plant roots generally can’t come through in passenger baggage without a phytosanitary certificate. If you declare a prohibited agricultural item, you can surrender it at the port of entry and continue on your way. If inspectors find something undeclared, you face a civil penalty on top of confiscation.³

Counterfeit Goods

Merchandise bearing counterfeit trademarks is seized on arrival and forfeited. CBP does not give a warning or a chance to pay a fine. The goods are taken and destroyed, the trademark owner is notified, and additional penalties are possible.¹⁹ A knockoff handbag bought abroad is one of the fastest ways to have something taken at the border.

Medications

Importing prescription drugs into the U.S. is generally illegal unless the drug has FDA approval. For travelers with a real medical need, the FDA may allow a personal supply, generally no more than 90 days’ worth, of a medication not available domestically, as long as you have documentation from a U.S.-licensed doctor and the drug doesn’t pose a known health risk. Foreign nationals visiting the U.S. can bring a 90-day supply of prescribed medication with a copy of the prescription and supporting travel documents.²⁰

Everything Else

CBP maintains a broad list of goods that cannot enter the country, including certain weapons, dangerous consumer products, and specific controlled substances. Some items that are perfectly legal abroad, like certain food products or items made from protected wildlife, are banned here.²¹ When in doubt, declare. An honest declaration that ends in surrendering a prohibited item is always better than an undeclared item that ends in a penalty.

Penalties for Getting It Wrong

Consequences depend on whether the error was innocent, careless, or deliberate. Federal law draws sharp lines between negligence, gross negligence, and fraud, and the penalty scale climbs fast.

Negligence: a civil penalty up to two times the duties and taxes the government lost, or 20% of the goods’ dutiable value if no duties were affected.
Gross negligence: up to four times the lost duties, or 40% of dutiable value.
Fraud: up to the full domestic value of the merchandise, meaning a penalty equal to what the goods are worth in the U.S.²²

There’s an important safety valve. If you find an error and voluntarily disclose it before CBP opens a formal investigation, the penalties drop sharply. For negligence or gross negligence, the penalty is reduced to just the interest owed on the unpaid duties. For fraud, it drops to 100% of the unpaid duties rather than the full value of the goods.²² Clerical errors and one-time electronic system glitches are also excluded from negligence penalties, so long as they aren’t part of a pattern.

1
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Customs User Fee – Merchandise Processing Fees
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Duty-Free Exemption
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Bringing Food Into the U.S.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP Form 6059B – Customs Declaration
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United States Postal Service. Customs Forms
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Postal Explorer. 123 Customs Forms and Online Shipping Labels
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eCFR. 19 CFR 128.24 – Informal Entry Procedures
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International Trade Administration. Harmonized System (HS) Codes
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP Form 6059B Customs Declaration – English (Fillable)
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Mobile Passport Control
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. How Much Currency/Monetary Instruments Can I Bring Into the United States?
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 USC 5321
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eCFR. 19 CFR 148.34 – Family Grouping of Exemptions for Articles Acquired Abroad
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eCFR. 19 CFR Part 148 – Personal Declarations and Exemptions
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Customs Duty Information
16
The White House. Continuing the Suspension of Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1321 – Administrative Exemptions
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The White House. Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1526
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Food and Drug Administration. Personal Importation
21
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Prohibited and Restricted Items
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1592 – Penalties for Fraud, Gross Negligence, and Negligence