Australia's Tariff Schedule,
read and applied live.
Enthron helps trade compliance teams automate product classification against the Combined Australian Customs Tariff Nomenclature and continuously resolve the full range of tariff measures and regulatory requirements associated with every HS code.
Legal structure of the Working Tariff
Australia's tariff is set out in the Customs Tariff Act 1995, administered day to day through what the Australian Border Force publishes as the Combined Australian Customs Tariff Nomenclature and Statistical Classification, commonly called the Working Tariff. Classification follows the same World Customs Organization 6-digit international HS base as every other WCO member, but Australia extends it only to 8 digits for legal tariff classification, two digits shorter than several major trading partners, with a further statistical suffix used for Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting rather than for duty assessment itself.
Classification questions are resolved using the General Rules of Interpretation, reproduced in Schedule 2 of the Act, applied in strict sequential order. Schedule 3 holds the Principal Tariff, the substantive HS-based schedule covering Chapters 1 through 97. Schedule 4 sits outside that logic and functions as Australia's concessional layer: it identifies classes of goods, and by-laws made under it, including Tariff Concession Orders, that may enter at a reduced or nil rate regardless of what Schedule 3 would otherwise assess, provided no comparable good is manufactured locally.
Successive free trade agreements have each been bolted onto the Act as their own numbered schedule rather than folded into Schedule 3, so the Act's schedule count has grown steadily over time, with the current version running to twenty one schedules. Schedule 5 sets out rates for United States-originating goods under AUSFTA and Schedule 6 for Thai-originating goods, with later schedules added in sequence for Chile, AANZFTA, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Peru, Indonesia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates as each agreement entered into force. A product's applicable rate therefore cannot be read from Schedule 3 alone; it depends on which, if any, of the later schedules the country of origin qualifies it for.
Duty rates and preferential trade programs
Australia runs one of the most open applied tariff regimes among OECD economies. The general (most-favoured-nation) rate is 0 percent for most raw materials, primary inputs, and a large share of manufactured goods, with 5 percent the standard rate for the remaining bulk of manufactured products such as clothing, footwear, furniture, and electronics not otherwise concession-free. A small number of categories, notably certain textiles and apparel, sit above that. Passenger motor vehicles and their components were reduced from 10 percent to 5 percent in a prior tariff simplification round and now sit at the same general rate as most other manufactured goods.
Beyond the general rate, two further Column-style rates can apply on a given line: a Developing Country Preference rate (coded DCS) for goods from countries listed in the Customs Tariff Regulations, and a narrower preferential rate (coded DCT) available only to Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Unlike the reciprocal free trade agreements below, these are autonomous, non-reciprocal concessions Australia extends unilaterally and can adjust or withdraw without a treaty renegotiation.
Reciprocal preferential access is where most import volume actually clears. Australia is party to bilateral agreements with New Zealand, Singapore, the United States, Thailand, Chile, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Peru, Indonesia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside the plurilateral ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA, the CPTPP, PACER Plus, and RCEP. Several partner countries are covered by more than one of these agreements simultaneously, most visibly China, Japan, Korea, and the ASEAN members, each reachable through both a bilateral agreement and RCEP with different rules of origin and phase-down schedules. Qualification under any of them still depends on satisfying that agreement's own rule of origin, whether a change in tariff classification, a regional value content threshold, or a wholly-obtained test, and claiming the correct one is a matter of commercial choice, not a single determinable answer.
An agreement with the European Union has been negotiated but is not yet in force, and a comprehensive agreement with India remains under negotiation alongside the existing narrower Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. Both should be treated as pending rather than assumed available.
Trade remedies at a glance
Separately from the tariff schedule itself, Australia can impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties, administered by the Anti-Dumping Commission and assessed exporter by exporter rather than as a single country-wide rate, and WTO-consistent safeguard measures where a surge in imports of a product is causing serious injury to a domestic industry, regardless of origin. Australia has no unilateral, country-specific unfair-practices tariff and no legislated mechanism to impose retaliatory tariffs outside the WTO or an agreement's own dispute settlement provisions. Where a trade remedy measure applies to a product, it sits on top of, and is assessed separately from, the ordinary tariff classification and rate covered on this page.
Concessions and unilateral tariff liberalisation
Where several other jurisdictions have spent recent years adding tariff layers, Australia has spent them removing them. The Tariff Concession System allows any importer to apply for, or rely on an existing, Tariff Concession Order reducing duty to nil for goods where no substitutable product is manufactured locally. Roughly 15,000 TCOs are currently in force, covering everything from specialised machinery to industrial inputs, though the scheme by law excludes a defined list of goods, including foodstuffs, clothing, and passenger motor vehicles, regardless of local manufacturing status. New orders and revocations are gazetted every Wednesday, making the concessional layer, like the FTA layer, something that has to be checked at the point of entry rather than assumed static.
Separately, the government has run two rounds of what it calls nuisance tariff removal: 457 tariff lines were abolished from 1 July 2024, covering goods such as refrigerators, dishwashers, and clothing, and a further 497 lines are scheduled for abolition from 1 July 2026, covering items including wine glasses, tyres, air conditioners, and bitumen. The stated rationale is that these lines raised negligible revenue relative to the compliance cost of proving eligibility for the concessional or preferential rate most shipments already qualified for. Further rounds have been flagged as under consultation, so the zero-rated share of the schedule should be expected to keep expanding rather than holding at its current size.
Other border charges
Customs duty is only one of the charges assessed at the Australian border. Goods and services tax, luxury car tax on higher-value vehicles, the wine equalisation tax, and biosecurity clearance through the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry are all assessed separately, under different statutes and different agencies, with their own thresholds and logic. A correct tariff classification and rate carries no presumption that any of these other charges or clearances have been correctly assessed, and this page does not cover their mechanics.
Principal compliance challenges
Self-assessment under a strict liability penalty regime
Importers, not the Australian Border Force, bear the legal obligation to correctly classify their own goods, determine origin, and declare customs value. Penalties attach to incorrect or misleading declarations regardless of intent, and the ABF can conduct post-clearance audits reaching back several years to reassess duty. Getting the initial classification wrong does not surface as a problem at the border; it surfaces later as a retrospective liability.
Choosing among overlapping free trade agreements
A product from China, Japan, Korea, or an ASEAN member state is frequently eligible for preferential treatment under more than one agreement at once, each with its own rule of origin, phase-down schedule, and documentary requirements. Determining the lowest available rate, and the certificate of origin that actually supports it, requires comparing agreements rather than checking a single schedule.
Duty is not the only assessment on a shipment
Customs duty, GST, and biosecurity clearance are assessed under different statutes by, in effect, two different agencies, each with its own thresholds and its own logic. A correct answer on classification and duty does not imply a correct answer on the others.
Tracking a schedule that changes through simplification rather than escalation
Between weekly TCO gazettal, annual 1 January FTA rate step-downs, and periodic nuisance tariff removal rounds, the applicable rate on a given line is rarely fixed for long. The direction of change is mostly downward, but a static rate table still goes stale on essentially the same cadence as one tracking an upward-trending schedule elsewhere.
The Enthron approach
A determination starts with the product itself: a description, spec sheet, or existing code submitted through the API or app, with Enthron asking for whatever attributes are missing before it commits to a classification. From there, it classifies against the full Working Tariff, Schedules 1 through 21, and identifies the best available duty rate across every FTA the product could qualify under, along with any applicable Tariff Concession Order. Every determination returns with the 8-digit code, a confidence score, the GRI logic applied, and the specific rate and concession stacked on top, giving a compliance team a clear, defensible basis for the number the moment it's questioned.
Classify against the Working Tariff
and everything stacked on it.
Enthron also covers US HTSUS, EU TARIC, UK Tariff, and the Canada, Singapore, and Japan schedules, giving compliance teams one platform for every jurisdiction they trade into.