Duty Recovery on International Returns

Duty recovery is the process of getting back import duties paid on goods that are later returned or re-exported. For most ecommerce brands it is functionally unavailable: government programs exist in only a minority of countries, typically take 6-12 months, and demand line-item documentation most teams cannot produce.

Swap approaches it commercially instead. Because Swap runs the order, the shipping, and the return in one system, every eligible return can be validated against its original duty amount and credited back - without the brand filing anything or waiting on a customs timeline. Global Duty Recovery credits 75% of the duty paid on returned goods, in every market a brand sells into through Swap Global.

75% of the import duty paid on the returned goods. The rate is fixed, which means it can be modelled into cross-border margin ahead of time rather than treated as a variable outcome you find out about later.

What it does not cover is worth stating plainly: recovery applies to duties on the goods only, not import fees, shipping costs, taxes on shipping, or other carrier charges. Separately, EU and UK low-value VAT are recoverable when using Swap IOSS or Swap UK VAT, and US sales tax is recoverable when Swap manages the tax process - each conditional on those services being in place.

Every market you sell into through Swap Global. Recovery is not limited to the countries that operate a government reclaim route, which is the constraint on every other option available to brands.

This is the difference that matters at scale. Government programs are country-specific, and the majority of markets offer no route back at all - so a brand selling into thirty countries might have a theoretical path in a handful of them and nothing in the rest. A fixed rate applied everywhere removes the country-by-country modelling entirely.

No. Swap validates the return against the original order and its exact duty amount automatically. Your team submits no documentation, works with no broker, and manages no customs process at any stage.

This is possible because of where the data already sits. Traditional recovery requires reconstructing a paper trail across import records, export records, and proof the returned goods match the imported goods - which is why it needs brokers. When the same platform ran the outbound order, the shipping, and the return, that trail already exists and the match is automatic.

Yes. Global Duty Recovery does not require moving to a merchant-of-record model or handing over the customer relationship to recover duty.

That distinction has commercial consequences. Recovery bundled into a merchant-of-record model means the platform owns the transaction, the customer data, and the reconciliation - and recovery tends to surface as an aggregate line item rather than a per-order figure. Swap credits recovery back while the brand keeps the transaction, the buyer relationship, and per-return visibility on what actually came back.