While other governments have chosen to expedite their removal of their respective de minimis provisions, the United Kingdom seems to be slowing its roll on doing the same.
UK Treasury boss Rachel Reeves has been planning for several months to oust de minimis, following a review of the ways that the policy impacts UK-based businesses. But according to a report from British newspaper The Times, the chancellor has elected to delay the collapse of the provision until 2029.
Reeves is expected to present her budget on Wednesday, and while many expected de minimis slashing to be added into the budget, The Times reported that it is “unlikely to take effect until at least March 2029.”
According to The Times, the reason for the delay is that Reeves and government officials believe that doing away with de minimis immediately could overwhelm customs and borders, bringing about issues for importers and logistics players alike. Reeves is reportedly slated to launch a consultation focused on how best to field the influx of parcels that will come in with added duties once de minimis has vanished. She expects to receive proposals over the next several months.
When Reeves announced in April that she would review de minimis in the UK, which currently allows parcels valued at £135 ($178) or less to enter duty free, major British retailers like Next called for its collapse. Primark and Superdry have also publicly called for the removal of de minimis in the UK.
The delay comes despite months of lobbying from companies like Bank & Vogue and organizations like the British Retail Consortium (BRC), who warned earlier this year that the tariff regime is “distorting competition, weakening the high street and costing British jobs.”
“It cannot come soon enough,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said in a statement. “The volume of potentially non-compliant goods entering the UK is growing exponentially and we encourage government to ensure this new policy is implemented as quickly as possible.”
That the plan to end de minimis is now delayed could be a source of disappointment for those retailers, whose general sentiment has been that the low-value parcels are hurting British businesses. The continued rise of China-founded e-commerce platforms, like Shein and Temu, has only furthered that conversation. The UK sees about 1.6 million de minimis entries daily, and, according to the Financial Times, experts expect that, once de minimis has been voided, the British government could recoup £400 ($528 million) million to £600 million ($791.5 million) annually.
The choice to delay squashing de minimis in favor of a gradual removal comes only a few months after U.S. President Donald Trump declared via executive order that the nation would close what many have called a trade “loophole” and only a few weeks after European Commission leaders said that they would implement a temporary solution to axe de minimis in Q1 of 2026, well ahead of the bloc’s pre-existing plans to eliminate de minimis in 2028.
The U.S.’s de minimis threshold previously stood at $800, while the EU’s stands at €150 ($174).
The EU will see full integration, complete with a data hub, within two years, but commissioners are working to frontload a mechanism to do away with the trade provision much sooner, even if it means the switch isn’t fully baked by the time it occurs. Individual nations in the bloc, like Germany and France, have also considered more stringent regulations than the at-large EU when it comes to de minimis.