AliExpress Orders to Paris and France: TVA, the €3 Duty and Where Parcels End Up

TVA and the €3 duty on an AliExpress order to France

France applies the common EU rules. The seller side of AliExpress collects TVA on low-value parcels, and customs adds the flat duty introduced in 2026:

Sources: European Commission (IOSS); Council of the EU, December 12, 2025.

Over €150, the parcel goes through full customs clearance. La Poste or the express courier will ask for the TVA, any duty and its own handling fee before handing it over; the tracker quoted below adds that this can cost two to five extra days. Keeping each order under €150 avoids both the fee and the wait.

Verdict: Under €150 per order, the checkout total is what you pay. Above it, budget for a clearance fee and a few days.

Delivery in Paris: carriers, relay points and timing

Delivery times from AliShopping Tools' 2026 country guide.

In Paris, many AliExpress parcels never reach the door. If nobody answers, La Poste leaves an avis de passage and holds the parcel at a bureau de poste or partner shop; on some lines the parcel is sent straight to a point relais. Collection windows are limited, often around two weeks, after which the parcel goes back — and a returned parcel is hard to recover through a dispute. Check the tracking page once the parcel reaches France and note where it's being held.

For protection, the date that counts is the guaranteed delivery date on the order page. If a parcel is marked delivered to a relay you never received a notice for, open a dispute within the window and include the tracking screenshot. Items that arrive but don't match the listing can be claimed within 15 days.

One Paris haul, two routes

Six items from three AliExpress stores, two from each, €20 apiece: three parcels, each one category. Bought on Taobao and Weidian through an agent, the same six cost about €84, plus around €28 in freight and fees, in one box with 2 categories:

Computed on this page: €3 × categories × parcels, then 20% TVA on goods, shipping and duty.

The agent route saves about €13.20 in this case. The saving comes mostly from the lower Chinese domestic prices, with a smaller part from paying duty on one parcel instead of three. It shrinks for smaller orders and disappears if something needs returning, since AliExpress offers free returns within 15 days on eligible items and an agent can't once the box has shipped.

Ordering from AliExpress to France: practical points

• Write your address the French way — number, street, then code postal and Paris with the arrondissement (75011 and so on) — and add the digicode or building name in the second line.
• Use your real name as it appears on ID; relay points ask for it at collection.
• Keep items from one store in one order to limit parcels and duty events.
• Convert sizes first. French shoe sizes are EU sizes; clothing labels like 170/88A aren't — the size converter decodes them.
• Know the exclusions: underwear, socks, food, batteries, customised items and anything AliExpress prohibits can't be returned free.

France has been among the EU members calling for tighter rules on low-value parcels, so further changes are likely. The duty calculator is updated when the EU rules move.

Agents for French buyers, compared

Every working agent here ships to France. Most offer TVA-included lines; compare two quotes for the same box and check that the €3 duty is part of the price.

Fees and storage are taken from each agent's own pages where they exist, otherwise from rep.tools, KakoGuide, W2C Spreadsheet or CNBuyPilot (marked third-party). Trustpilot figures were read between Sept 26 and 29, 2026; 'score hidden' means Trustpilot pulled the rating over guideline breaches. A dash means no source we could check.