EMS Philippines: Import Taxes and Processing Fees

Related to EMS: Commute and How to, my package was priced at 300 USD. It flew from the US. Below is the receipt and breakdown of the tax I had to pay, referenced from this helpful blog post.

The Customs Documentary Stamp (CDS) @ 265 Php and Import Processing Fee (IPF) @ 250 Php are pretty much standard.

tl;dr convert your Transactional Value to Php and take one-third of the price, and voila! a healthy estimate. I can't say if there are days Customs will charge more, but they are known to.

Nothing beats the convenience of a private courier, if a teeny bit costly, but compared to how much Customs can charge you, much more stable and actually cheaper.