Why buying idol merchandise from Japan costs so much — and what could actually fix it

A €6.25 CD. €51.20 to receive it in the Netherlands. Here is why, and what could change it.

If you are an international idol fan, you already know buying from Japan is expensive. Most of us just accept it as part of the deal. But I sat down and actually worked out where the money goes, and once you see it broken down, it is hard to just shrug it off.

It is not one expensive thing. It is a chain of systems, each taking a cut, none of which were built with international fans in mind. Some of those costs are unavoidable. Others are not. And the fix for the avoidable ones already exists, it just is not being used.

What you actually pay

Let me use a real example. A CD on a Japanese BASE shop for 1,000 yen. That is about €6.25. Here is what it actually costs a Dutch fan to receive that CD at home in 2026, using Buyee with EMS shipping (for this example a rate of 1 Euro = 160 yen is used):

Then when it arrives:

A €6.25 CD costs €51.20 to receive. That is 8.2 times the retail price. For smaller idol groups, this likely also means lost international sales, not because fans are unwilling to support them, but because the final cost becomes hard to justify at checkout.

Shipping is the single biggest cost, and there is not much to be done about that. Even with everything optimised, you are still moving a package from Japan to Europe. But a significant part of what you are paying does not need to be there, and that is what this post is about.

Where the money goes

Shipping Japan Post EMS to Europe costs ¥3,150 for a small parcel. It is real, it is unavoidable, and nothing in this post changes it.

The Buyee service fee ¥500 flat. The cost of using a proxy because there is no direct option. Also unavoidable until there is a better alternative.

The Japanese consumption tax Japan's consumption tax is 10%. BASE shops label their prices as tax included, which is standard for the Japanese domestic market, and any Japanese buyer knows exactly what it means. For an international buyer looking at the same page, it just reads as the price. What it actually means is that 91 yen of that 1,000 yen, about €0.57, is a domestic Japanese tax that was not really meant for you.

That amount gets included in the declared customs value, which means your Dutch BTW gets calculated on top of it too. On a single cheap CD it is small. On a ¥10,000 order it is nearly €5.68. It compounds.

Whether this can be fixed is a more complicated question. When you use a proxy, the purchase of your item happens as a domestic transaction between the proxy and the Japanese shop, the tax is applied correctly under Japanese law at that stage. It is a structural consequence of how cross-border purchasing works in Japan, not a deliberate decision to charge you extra. For it to be stripped from international orders, a seller would need to consciously price differently for overseas buyers. That is a separate step, and a harder one.

The PostNL handling fee This is the one that bothers me the most, because it is the most fixable. When a package arrives from outside the EU without pre-cleared VAT information, PostNL processes the customs declaration on your behalf and charges you €10 for it. Since January 2025 that fee applies to all packages under €150, regardless of what is inside. A ¥1,000 CD costs the same to process as a package worth €149.

The PostNL fee alone is 160% of the product value on a single cheap CD. And it is entirely avoidable, more on that below.

The EU flat customs duty From 1 July 2026, the EU adds a flat €3 duty on all parcels under €150 coming from outside the bloc. This was aimed at the enormous volume of cheap packages from China, 4.6 billion small parcels entered the EU in 2024, 91% from China. Japanese idol merch is not that, but it gets caught in the same net anyway.

One thing worth knowing: the €3 is per item category per parcel, not per item. So ten CDs in one parcel is still €3. Consolidating orders helps.

The Dutch BTW 21% over the full Buyee subtotal, product, fees, and all shipping included. On a small cheap order it is less than the handling fee. But once your Buyee total passes about €47.62, roughly a product price of ¥3,600, the BTW overtakes the handling fee and keeps climbing with every yen you spend, while the handling fee stays flat. On bigger orders, a bundle of things, a signed item, a t-shirt, the BTW becomes the dominant cost by a good margin. Worth keeping in mind when you consider whether to consolidate.

It is not just a Dutch problem

Every country in the EU, and the UK, has its own version of the handling fee. The amounts differ but the mechanism is the same: package arrives without pre-cleared VAT, carrier processes the paperwork, you pay for it.

A Belgian fan buying the same 1,000 yen CD through Buyee hits a €19.50 bpost handling fee. Their grand total is around €60.70, nearly 10 times the retail price.

All of these fees go to zero with IOSS. Every single one of them.

A note on BASE and Cross Cart

A lot of idol groups sell through BASE, and for international buyers BASE has Cross Cart, operated by want.jp Inc., a subsidiary of BASE Inc. itself. They describe it as a bridge between Japanese creators and fans around the world, and it does solve one real problem: because it is built directly into BASE, you no longer lose items to stock selling out while a proxy is slowly processing your order. That alone is genuinely useful.

The cost structure, however, works the same as any proxy arrangement. Cross Cart purchases items domestically in Japan, with the consumption tax applied correctly at that domestic stage, and then forwards the package internationally as a service. The tax-inclusive product price is what you see at checkout, it is not hidden, but it is also not explained in a way that means much to an international buyer. You pay the domestic price, Cross Cart's fees stack on top, and your own country's import charges wait at the other end.

This is how the system is structured, not necessarily how it was designed to disadvantage anyone. But it is worth understanding what you are actually paying for.

The fix: IOSS

IOSS (Import One Stop Shop) is an EU system where a non-EU seller registers as a VAT collector, charges your country's VAT rate at checkout, and pays it directly to the EU tax authority. When a package arrives with a valid IOSS number on the label, it clears customs automatically.

No handling fee. No payment request arriving after your package. No waiting.

This is how AliExpress works. It is how most large international webshops work. The system exists and is proven. It just requires the seller to use it.

It is important to be clear about what IOSS actually does, because there is a common assumption that it fixes everything:

IOSS will: eliminate the handling fee entirely, in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the UK, everywhere.

IOSS will: make your destination VAT visible and payable at checkout, no surprises.

IOSS will not: automatically remove the Japanese consumption tax from the product price. That is a separate structural issue within Japan's domestic tax system. IOSS has no control over it. Whether the consumption tax gets stripped depends entirely on whether the seller chooses to apply export pricing for international orders, a distinct step that not every seller will take.

These are two separate things, and it is worth being clear on that. IOSS alone is already a major improvement even if the Japanese tax situation never changes. Here is what the same CD would cost with IOSS from July 2026:

If the seller also strips the Japanese consumption tax:

If the seller uses IOSS but keeps the Japanese consumption tax in the price, the more realistic near-term scenario:

Either way, the saving compared to €51.20 is between €16.81 and €17.50. That is a 33% reduction, almost entirely from removing the handling fee. IOSS alone gets you most of the way there.

Japan and the EU should probably talk

The EU's new customs rules exist for a real reason. 4.6 billion small parcels in 2024, 91% from China, a lot of them cheap goods with safety and labelling concerns. The €3 flat duty and the broader reform can make some sense as a response to that.

Japan is not like that. The EU and Japan have had a trade agreement since 2019. Japanese goods are properly made, properly labelled, and come from a country the EU has a real working relationship with. A ¥1,000 idol CD from a small independent group in Tokyo should probably not be processed through the exact same customs framework as a Temu haul, but right now it is.

There is a reasonable case to be made, to Japanese trade bodies, to EU policymakers, to anyone involved in the EU-Japan trade relationship, that IOSS adoption by Japanese small businesses and cultural exporters is worth encouraging. The infrastructure exists. It would benefit fans and creators. It would also just be a more accurate reflection of what Japanese cultural goods actually are.

What I would like to see

If you are a Japanese idol group or management: consider enabling IOSS if your platform supports it. The fans buying your merchandise from overseas are paying over 8 times the retail price to support you. A system that removes that €10 to €19.50 handling fee would mean more of them actually completing the purchase instead of closing the cart when they see the total.

If you work at BASE or a similar platform: IOSS registration is a documented process. At the scale you operate, it is not a small undertaking, but the international fan base is already there. A genuine improvement to the buying experience would match the mission you have already set out for yourselves.

If you are reading this from the EU side: the €3 flat duty is understandable as a policy response. Revisiting how it applies to small cultural goods from treaty partners, Japan in particular, seems like a reasonable follow-up conversation.

And if you are an international idol fan: the costs are real, the structure is not accidental, and it does not have to stay this way. Talk about it, share the numbers, ask the groups you support what their international shop situation looks like. The more visible this conversation gets, the more likely something changes.

Have you ever added up what you actually paid for an order from Japan? And if you are on the other side, a shop owner, a group's management, or someone working in this space, I would genuinely like to hear your perspective.

Sources

1. Japan consumption tax rate — JETRO:
2. Japanese exports zero-rated for consumption tax — PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries
3. Cross-border ecommerce exports and consumption tax — Stripe
4. B2B consumption tax structure in Japan — EU-Japan Centre
5. Buyee service fee structure — Buyee help centre
6. Japan Post EMS rates to Europe Zone 3 — Japan Post
7. PostNL handling fee structure — PostNL
8. PostNL handling fee changes from January 2025 — PostNL
9. Dutch BTW calculated over goods plus all shipping and fees — PostNL
10. bpost handling fee €19.50 — bpost
11. Deutsche Post handling fee €6 — Deutsche Post DHL Group
12. Royal Mail handling fee £8 — Royal Mail
13. DHL Express minimum handling fee €16.50 — DHL Express Netherlands
14. EU import duty on music CDs: 0% — Dutify
15. EU €3 flat customs duty from 1 July 2026 — Council of the EU
16. EU €3 duty final approval February 2026 — Council of the EU
17. €3 duty applies per item category per parcel — Euronews
18. 4.6 billion small parcels, 91% from China — Council of the EU
19. IOSS system explanation — European Commission
20. IOSS and PostNL handling fee elimination — PostNL
21. EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement — European Commission