Is the government thinking about lowering Jamaica’s duty free threshold from US$100 back down to US$50?

So during her closing budget presentation, Finance Minister Fayval Williams complained that the government is losing money under the 100 USD duty-free import threshold. 

Now that to me was quite shocking!  Not that no revenues are flowing to the treasury, or that people are splitting up their orders.  The part that this was unforeseen.  Because this is exactly what Jamaicans used to do when the threshold was 50 dollars.  You gotta be completely out of touch with the ordinary man to not know this.

You used to make sure that your order comes up to 49.99, just under the 50-dollar limit, and then you do a second order for whatever else or a third order, a fourth order, each under 50 dollars to avoid the taxes. 

Now that it’s 100 dollars, same.  Just that we can buy more expensive items now, and we don’t have to do as much splitting for the cheaper items.

Just to give you some context – when the government raised the threshold from 50 to 100 US in 2024, it was one of the most requested and most celebrated tax policy changes at the time.  Because what can you really buy with 50 dollars?

The government had framed it as a move that reflects inflation and supports e-commerce, improves efficiency, and makes it easier for Jamaicans to shop online. 

They did acknowledge and accept that the higher threshold would mean giving up some revenue.

But now, Minister Williams says the policy is having the “unforeseen consequence” of people splitting up orders to be at or below the limit.  She sounded pretty frustrated about it too, but didn’t provide a number to say how much tax revenue has been lost because of this.

Now the 2026 budget did include higher taxes because the government needs to rebuild after Hurricane Melissa.  So far, they have NOT rolled back the duty free threshold back to 50 dollars, but it does make you wonder if this is something they’re contemplating.  Especially since there’s also been a significant fallout for local businesses that import items for resale locally.

And that’s the bottom line.