Importing MLB jerseys into Taiwan: duty rates, counterfeit risk and the Japanese tax-free rules

Duty rates for ten MLB items

Import charges are calculated on the customs value (CIF = goods price + international freight + insurance): customs duty = customs value x duty rate; business tax = (customs value + customs duty) x 5%. Every rate in the table below comes from column one of our customs import tariff database, checked line by line in September 2026.

Jersey classification follows the cut and the fabric: button-front goes under "shirts", pullover styles under "pullovers", collarless short sleeves under "T-shirts"; a knitted cap (6505.00.23.00-1) likewise carries 10% in column one. If trading cards are classified as other printed matter (4911.99.00.00-2), column one is also 0%. None of these ten codes carries MW0 (goods of mainland China not permitted for import) or M88 in the database, so the tariff adds no extra restriction merely because a parcel is sent from China. Classification is decided by customs on the basis of the actual goods; click a tariff code to see the full rate and import requirements.

What the common online claims get wrong

An earlier version of this page, like plenty of articles online, put the rates on MLB merchandise at "jerseys 10%, caps 7.5%, gloves 7.5%" and added percentage gaps between overseas and Taiwanese retail prices. Checked one by one against the tariff database, most of those figures do not hold up.

• "Jerseys are HS 6109 at 10%" is wrong: 6109 covers T-shirts, and the column-one rate for man-made fibers is 12%; a Nike button-front jersey is a knitted shirt (6105.20.00.00-8) at 10.5% in column one. The figure "jersey duty 10%" appears nowhere in the tariff.
• "Caps are HS 6505 at 7.5%" is wrong: every hat under heading 6505 carries 10% in column one, whether it is cotton or man-made fiber, knitted or not.
• "Baseball gloves are HS 9506 at 7.5%" is wrong: leather baseball gloves belong to the leather articles of Chapter 42 (4203.21.00.10-0) at 10% in column one, while within Chapter 95 the ball itself is 3.3% and bats and other sports equipment are 2.5%. Different chapters, so naturally different rates.
• "A trade promotion service fee of 0.5%" is wrong: the old version of this page said 0.5% in one place and 0.04% in another, contradicting itself. The rate and the scope of that fee follow the announcements of the Customs Administration, Ministry of Finance, and this page no longer builds it into any calculation.
• No overseas prices and no "save 36% / 40%": official store prices move with the season, with promotions and with exchange rates, so any US dollar figure written into an article is wrong a few months later and cannot be verified. This page quotes only numbers that can be checked against the tariff database and the text of the law.
• "Buy in Japan and get 10% back" is incomplete: the exemption requires the buyer to carry the goods out of the country, so it does not apply to parcels sent to Taiwan, and the system itself changes to a refund on departure in November 2026. Details in the next section.

The test is a single sentence: look up the code and the column-one rate for that item in the customs import tariff, not an article online and not the "tax included" line on a shopping page. Use our tariff search before you buy.

Is buying MLB gear in Japan cheaper

"Is MLB gear cheaper in Japan" is the most searched question on this page. The answer turns on two things: whether you personally carry the goods out of Japan, and whether you exceed the traveler allowance when you return to Taiwan.

• The exemption is only for travelers who carry the goods out themselves: the tax-free Q&A of the Japanese National Tax Agency states that the quantity you may buy tax-free is limited to what "the purchaser carries out of the country in person at departure"; if the goods are not with you when you leave, customs will not confirm them even if you produce proof of shipment, and the exemption does not apply. The separate-dispatch scheme, under which goods bought at a tax-free store were mailed from a post office, was abolished on 31 March 2025. Handing goods to a forwarder, or asking someone else to send them to Taiwan, gets you no exemption.
• From 1 November 2026 it becomes a refund on departure: under the Japanese Ministry of Finance explanation of the fiscal 2025 tax reform, the tax-free system becomes a refund method in which the sale is taxed and an amount equivalent to the consumption tax is refunded afterwards, applying from 1 November of Reiwa 8 (2026); the traveler must present the goods for export confirmation by customs at departure within 90 days of purchase in order to be refunded. The distinction between general goods and consumables is dropped at the same time, but the threshold of 5,000 yen (before tax) spent at one store on one day remains. In other words, buying tax-free at the register disappears, and if you cannot carry the goods out you do not get the tax back.
• Back in Taiwan the NT$35,000 traveler baggage allowance applies: Article 11 of the Regulations Governing the Inspection, Duty Assessment and Release of Inbound Passengers' Baggage provides that baggage for personal and household use (controlled items, tobacco and alcohol excluded) is exempt when the total customs value is NT$35,000 or less. The Ministry of Finance raised that figure from NT$20,000 with effect from 26 June 2024, and the current text of the article was amended on 30 January 2026. It does not apply to passengers obviously carrying goods for profit, or who travel frequently and have a record of violations (2 or more entries and exits within 30 days, or 6 or more within half a year).
• Japan-only merchandise really does exist: the Dodgers and the Cubs played the MLB Tokyo Series at the Tokyo Dome on 18 and 19 March 2025 (the overseas opener in 2024 was in Seoul, Dodgers against Padres), and official Japan-only merchandise was released for it; what takes place at the Tokyo Dome in March 2026 is the World Baseball Classic, and MLB has not yet announced the next Tokyo Series. These are all options for going to Japan and buying in person; we have no Japanese warehouse and no Japanese lane.
• So this is how to work out whether it is cheaper: the Japanese price (with tax, or after the refund) plus the cost of the trip, against the Taiwanese retail price; if instead you have someone send it from Japan, you lose the exemption and still have to add international freight plus Taiwanese customs duty and business tax.

The Japanese rules are compiled from the Ministry of Finance explanation of the Reiwa 7 tax reform, the Japan Tourism Agency page on the tax-free system and the National Tax Agency tax-free Q&A (Reiwa 8, July edition); effective dates and details follow the latest official Japanese announcements. The Taiwanese traveler allowance follows the current text in the national Laws and Regulations Database. We do not offer proxy purchasing, forwarding or a dedicated lane from Japan.

Where the licensed channels are

There are really only a handful of sources of genuine licensed MLB merchandise: MLB Shop and Fanatics in the United States, the official store in Japan, the "MLB" fashion brand licensed to F&F of Korea, and licensed stores and distributors in Taiwan. Where you buy decides whether what arrives is genuine. Incidentally, the Fanatics online sales figures published by MLB.com in July 2025 put the Shohei Ohtani jersey first in global sales for the first half of the 2025 season.

Channel information is compiled from each official website as consulted in September 2026; shipping coverage and conditions change, so follow the checkout page of the site concerned before ordering. We have no commercial relationship with any of the stores above.

How the jersey tiers differ

The official MLB press release of February 2024 states that Fanatics, Nike and MLB jointly introduced retail jerseys in "three tiers" (the Nike Vapor Premier line): Elite, Limited and Game. They differ in fabric and in how the logo, the name and the numbers are applied; for the same player, the price can differ several times over between tiers.

The names and construction of the first three tiers come from the MLB.com press release of 13 February 2024; they are adjusted from season to season, so follow the official MLB Shop / Fanatics pages, and this page lists no prices. Tariff classification ignores the tier: authentic or replica, a knitted button-front jersey is 6105.20.00.00-8 at 10.5%.

Counterfeit jerseys: how customs responds

The cheap MLB jerseys sold in quantity on Chinese e-commerce sites as "player version" or "embroidered version" are mostly not licensed by MLB or Nike. Before shipping one to Taiwan through the Shenzhen warehouse, be clear about what customs will do: the goods are seized, and the money may go too.

• Anything detected is confiscated: goods that customs finds to infringe a trademark are confiscated under Article 39-1 of the Customs Anti-Smuggling Act, and a fine of up to 3 times the value of the goods may be imposed. On 29 May 2025 the Ministry of Finance amended Article 4 of the Standards for Reduction and Exemption of Penalties in Customs Anti-Smuggling Cases, effective on the date of promulgation: goods infringing a patent, a trademark or copyright no longer qualify for exemption from the fine at a value of NT$5,000 or less.
• No criminal liability for personal use, but the goods and the money are lost all the same: the import offense in Article 97 of the Trademark Act requires an "intent to sell", so buying a single item purely for your own use does not incur that criminal liability; confiscation and administrative fines, however, apply whether the goods are for personal use or for sale. Several pieces of the same item, or a record of selling, may be enough to establish an intent to sell.
• Border enforcement is systematic: a trademark owner may apply to customs for protective recordal, and customs inspects under the Regulations Governing Customs Measures for the Protection of Trademark Rights; when goods appear likely to infringe, the right holder and the importer are both notified and each has 3 working days to submit evidence. Express parcels are exactly where enforcement focuses: the Customs Administration figures for 2025 record 425 import cases involving trademark infringement and more than 4.92 million counterfeit articles seized; by mode of transport, the year's enforcement cases were mainly air express with 297 and sea express with 100, against 0 postal packets and 1 passenger, while clothing accounted for 17,326 articles, second only to pharmaceuticals among the named categories.
• We do not carry counterfeit goods: where HowBridge finds suspected counterfeits on arrival at the warehouse they will not be consolidated, and slipping fakes in can drag down the other goods in the same consignment.
• The official MLB authentication program does not cover retail jerseys: the MLB Authentication Program certifies only memorabilia that an authenticator personally witnessed being "used in a game or signed on the spot", which then carries a hologram label that can be looked up in the MLB.com database. A retail jersey bought online will not have that label and cannot be looked up, so "you can verify it on the official MLB site" is a misunderstanding.
• How to tell: MLB and Nike publish no guide to telling genuine retail jerseys from fakes, so the real test is whether the source is a licensed channel. A price well below the official one, a product page that says only "player version" or "embroidered version" without naming a license, or a shop that carries every team and every player, all mean high risk. Note too that Nike did adjust the fabric and the size of names and numbers between the 2024 and 2025 seasons (road jerseys switched to a heavier fabric with larger name lettering in 2025, and home jerseys followed in 2026), so a difference in cut between years does not mean a fake.

For the penalties, the confiscation procedure and how to protect yourself after being cheated, see the full article: Importing counterfeit goods into Taiwan: how customs checks and how much you are fined. The enforcement figures are taken from the Customs Administration, Ministry of Finance, statistical table of customs enforcement cases involving infringement of intellectual property rights for ROC year 114; for the international picture, see Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025 by the OECD and EUIPO: clothing accounts for 21.6% of counterfeit articles seized worldwide, the most frequently seized category of all.

Inspection, infant sizes and the duty-free threshold

Adult jerseys, caps and trading cards carry no import requirements in the tariff, and garment inspection is not enforced at the point of import; what actually gets held up at clearance is clothing sized for infants of 24 months or under and batting helmets flagged C02. On top of that, the NT$2,000 duty-free threshold applies to every shipment.

• Adult jerseys and caps: no inspection application at import: none of the jersey, T-shirt and cap codes in the table above carries C01 or C02 in the database, and none carries MW0 or M88. A determination case of the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection states expressly that "hats are headgear products and are not goods subject to compulsory inspection"; garments for wearers over 24 months are subject to inspection, but the method is "spot checks at any time on samples bought in the market, with no need to apply to the Bureau for inspection or to affix the commodity inspection mark" (the seller confirms compliance with CNS 15290) - for a personal import, only the taxes matter.
• Only clothing for infants of 24 months or under is held at clearance: clothing for infants of 24 months or under, or under 86 cm in height, is subject to "monitoring inspection" and may be imported only once the inspection procedure is complete and the commodity inspection mark has been affixed. Watch for this when buying baby-sized jerseys or sets; that is exactly what the C02 flag on tariff code 6114.30.00.00-5, "other garments of man-made fibers", means.
• Batting helmets are flagged C02; bats and gloves depend on whether they count as toys: batting helmets (6506.10.90.90-7) carry C02 (some goods under that line are subject to inspection, not all of them). The toy classification principles of the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection treat "sports equipment of official standard competition specification" as not subject to inspection, so baseballs, bats and gloves in adult specification are outside inspection, while toy versions for children of 14 or under count as toys and must be inspected. The same principles also list baseball cards as goods not subject to inspection (limited-edition collectibles bought by adults).
• The inspection-exemption threshold: under Article 5 of the Regulations Governing Exemption from Commodity Inspection, goods for personal use and not for sale may be granted exemption where the total value of the same specification and model on one declaration is US$1,000 or less; above US$1,000, personal-use goods are limited to 2 pieces. Protective helmets have their own provision: US$1,000 or less and no more than 4 helmets, or above US$1,000 and no more than 2 helmets. Several declarations on the same import date are counted together. Exemption from inspection is not exemption from tax.
• The NT$2,000 duty-free threshold: under Article 7 of the Regulations Governing Customs Clearance for Import and Export of Postal Consignments, postal and express imports with a customs value within NT$2,000 are exempt from customs duty, commodity tax and business tax; above that the whole shipment is taxed. Counted per the same taxpayer for express and regular imports, and per the same recipient for postal parcels under Article 12 of the same regulations, more than 6 duty-free releases in a half-year period (January to June, July to December) ends the exemption. Where parcels are consolidated, the customs value of the batch is calculated together under Article 49, paragraph 2 of the Customs Act.
• Labeling fiber content is the seller's obligation: Article 5 of the Commodity Labeling Act requires manufacturers, importers and others to label goods "when they enter the market for circulation", and Article 13 forbids sellers to sell unlabeled goods; a personal import involves no sale and, on the wording of those articles, falls outside them (a conclusion drawn from the wording; the competent authority has issued no separate ruling).

You can look up your own count of duty-free releases on the Customs-Port-Trade Single Window. We do not file commodity inspection applications for customers; the goods subject to inspection and the inspection method follow the latest announcements of the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection, Ministry of Economic Affairs (this section draws on the Bureau documents "Determination Cases for Goods Subject to Inspection (Textiles-2)" and "Principles for the Classification of Toy Products").

How to actually buy MLB merchandise

Frequently asked questions