One of the quiet little joys of living abroad is that eventually you figure out the local system.

You learn which grocery store has the good produce.
Which neighborhood café makes the coffee worth walking for.
Which app gets your food to the door faster.
Which pharmacy actually has what you need.
Which ATM to trust.
Which one feels like it was designed by your enemies.

And if you’re an expat in Colombia, one of the systems a lot of people quietly came to depend on was international online shopping.

Not for everything.
Colombia is not some empty outpost where you can’t find normal life.
You can.

But for certain things — electronics, supplements, specialty gear, camera accessories, computer parts, niche kitchen tools, that oddly specific product you’ve bought for seven years and suddenly can’t live without — Amazon and similar platforms became part of the expat survival kit.

For a long time, there was a very helpful little rule sitting in the background: if your international order came into Colombia under $200, it could usually enter without paying IVA, Colombia’s value-added tax.

That made a big difference.

It meant people could order smaller items without feeling like every purchase needed to go through a tax obstacle course. It made imported specialty products more accessible. And for a lot of foreigners living in Colombia — especially digital professionals, remote workers, and people still half-dependent on U.S. buying habits — it made life a lot easier.

That changed in 2026.

And if you live in Colombia and order from Amazon, Temu, Shein, AliExpress, or other international platforms, it’s worth understanding exactly what happened, because this is one of those policy shifts that sounds small until it starts showing up in your checkout total.

Then suddenly it feels very personal.

Let’s start with the practical part.

For years, Colombia allowed many international purchases under $200 to enter the country without paying IVA. So if you ordered something from abroad and the shipment stayed under that threshold, it could usually come in tax-free.

That’s one of the reasons international shopping became such a useful habit here.

People could buy products that were hard to find locally.
They could sometimes find better prices than in Colombia.
And they could avoid an extra tax hit on relatively modest purchases.

But under Decree 1390 of 2025, issued as part of the government’s economic emergency measures, that threshold was reduced dramatically.

Starting in 2026, the tax-free limit dropped from $200 to $50.

That’s the real headline.

And the practical effect is simple:

If the total value of your order — including the item itself, shipping, and insurance — goes above $50, it may now be subject to Colombia’s 19% IVA.

So something that used to come in under the old rules without a tax charge can now arrive with an extra 19% added to the cost.

That’s not a minor adjustment.

That’s the kind of rule change that turns “sure, I’ll just order it” into “wait, why is this suddenly not worth it?”

The government’s argument is not especially mysterious.

International e-commerce grew fast.
A lot of Colombians were buying from overseas platforms.
And under the old system, many of those imported purchases had a tax advantage compared to products sold locally by Colombian retailers.

That matters because if you walk into a store in Colombia and buy something, the IVA is already built into the price. You don’t see it added awkwardly at checkout the way Americans are used to seeing sales tax. It’s already there, just like in much of Europe.

So from the government’s perspective — and from the perspective of some Colombian retailers — imported online purchases had a structural advantage.

Local stores had to operate inside the VAT system.
Imported small parcels under $200 often didn’t.

By lowering the threshold from $200 to $50, the government made a much larger number of online purchases taxable.

In theory, that does two things:

It raises more tax revenue.
And it helps level the playing field between foreign online sellers and domestic Colombian businesses.

That’s the official logic.

And to be fair, from a policy standpoint, you can understand the argument.

But like almost every tax rule, the policy may make sense on one spreadsheet while creating real friction in everyday life for actual people.

And that’s where things get more interesting.

If you’re living in the U.S., it’s easy to forget how spoiled we get by access.

Need a cable?
Need a specialty supplement?
Need a very specific laptop stand, SD card reader, microphone arm, or kitchen gadget?
You tap a few things into Amazon and it’s on your porch before you’ve fully committed to needing it.

When you move to Colombia, most of daily life is actually easy to cover locally.

Groceries?
Easy.

Household basics?
Easy.

Clothing?
Easy.

Furniture?
Appliances?
Pharmacy items?
Normal life?
All of that exists here.

But there are certain categories where foreigners still lean heavily on international ordering.

Things like:

Computer parts and accessories
Professional electronics
Camera gear
Specialty supplements and vitamins
Niche hobby equipment
Brand-specific products you’re used to from the U.S.
Certain kitchen tools or lifestyle items that just aren’t as easy to source locally

That’s where this rule hits harder.

Because these are often not giant luxury purchases. They’re just the little specialized things that make your work, your routines, or your hobbies easier.

Under the old rules, if those purchases stayed under $200, life was relatively simple.

Now that the threshold is $50, a lot more of those same purchases cross the line.

And once they do, the 19% IVA starts changing the economics pretty fast.

That doesn’t mean international ordering is dead.
It absolutely is not.

It just means a lot more purchases now come with a little extra tax pain attached to them.

And if you are the kind of expat who works online, creates content, depends on tech gear, or maintains one foot in the U.S. product ecosystem, you’ll probably notice the difference sooner than someone who buys mostly local basics.

This is where policy gets messy in that very government way where the answer is technically under review but practically still affecting people.

The threshold change came out of the same decree tied to the government’s broader economic emergency measures.

Then the constitutional court temporarily suspended the economic emergency, which created uncertainty about whether all of the related measures — including this tax change — should continue to apply exactly as issued.

In theory, that means there has been legal ambiguity.

In practice, though, a lot of consumers still see import-related charges or deposits when they order from international platforms.

That’s because large platforms often collect an import fees deposit at checkout. This is basically money set aside to cover potential taxes, customs charges, or import obligations once the shipment enters Colombia.

If the tax ends up applying, that deposit is used.
If it doesn’t, part of it may be refunded.

The problem is that for ordinary consumers, this can feel like a very annoying kind of uncertainty.

You go to order something.
You see the extra charge.
You’re not totally sure whether it’s final.
You’re not totally sure whether the rule is fully settled.
And yet the platform is still pricing in the possibility that it will apply.

So even when the legal situation has gray areas, the shopping experience can still behave as if the tax environment has already hardened.

And that’s what people notice.

Not the decree number.
Not the constitutional nuance.
The total at checkout.

Whenever a rule changes, people adjust.

That’s what humans do.

And expats in Colombia have already started developing the obvious workarounds and coping strategies.

This is the first move people think of, and for obvious reasons.

If the threshold is now $50, then one natural strategy is to break a bigger order into multiple smaller shipments so that each one stays under the limit.

Instead of placing one $120 order, someone might place two or three separate orders below the threshold.

That doesn’t always work perfectly. It depends on the platform, the seller, the shipping structure, and whether the items can realistically be split. But people are trying it, and in some cases it can help.

There’s also that narrow little sweet spot where some platforms still offer free shipping above a certain amount, which makes the math a little more interesting.

But the broader point is clear:
people are no longer shopping the same way they were before.

They’re shopping strategically.

This is probably the most practical move for anyone relocating to Colombia or returning after a trip to the U.S.

If you know you’re going to want certain electronics or specialty items — laptops, hard drives, microphones, camera accessories, tablets, external monitors, small professional gear — it often makes much more sense to buy those in the United States and bring them in your luggage.

Why?

Because once you’ve already physically brought the item as part of your personal belongings, you’re often avoiding the weird little tax drama of importing it later through international delivery.

As long as the items look like personal-use gear and not like you’re opening an electronics store in your apartment, this is usually the cleanest solution.

Honestly, this has already been a smart move in Colombia even before the new rule, because imported tech has long tended to be pricier here than in the U.S.

The new threshold just makes that logic stronger.

Another adaptation is simply shifting more purchases to the Colombian market.

There are plenty of large retailers and marketplaces in Colombia where you can find electronics, appliances, accessories, and general consumer goods. Prices may be higher than what you’d find in the U.S., but for some purchases, the convenience and simplicity are worth it.

Especially once you factor in shipping delays, customs uncertainty, deposits, and the tax issue.

This won’t solve everything. Colombia still isn’t the easiest place for every niche imported product. But for a lot of categories, local buying becomes more attractive once the import rule starts making smaller international orders less efficient.

This is one of the most human solutions of all.

When friends or relatives are coming from the U.S., a very common expat move is:
“Hey, if I order this small item, can you throw it in your suitcase?”

It’s not a scalable trade policy.
But it is a very real expat behavior.

And honestly, it works because international life is often built on little informal networks of cooperation like that.

None of these workarounds are perfect.
They just reflect the same thing:
people adapt when systems become less convenient.

What makes this conversation interesting is that it’s not really just about tax.

It’s about access.

Because when you look closely, the items many expats order internationally are often not just consumer luxuries. A lot of them are tools.

Technology.
Professional equipment.
Creative tools.
Computer gear.
Media equipment.
Things that help people work, build, produce, learn, earn, and participate in a global economy.

And that’s where reasonable people can disagree with the policy even if they understand the tax logic.

On one side, yes, protecting local retailers and increasing tax revenue are understandable goals.

On the other side, making technology and specialized goods harder or more expensive to access can slow things down for the very people trying to become more productive.

That’s especially true in a world where so much opportunity is now mediated by hardware and tools.

A better microphone can help someone launch a podcast.
A better laptop can help someone code.
A camera accessory can help someone build a business.
A piece of networking equipment can help someone work better.
A specialty tool can help somebody turn a side skill into income.

These aren’t always trivial purchases.

Sometimes they’re productivity purchases.

And once a country starts taxing those more aggressively at the import level, it’s fair to ask whether that creates more friction than it solves.

This is where I tend to think a little differently.

If the goal is to help a country grow, then in many cases the smarter long-term strategy is not making advanced tools harder to access.

It’s making them easier to access.

If it were up to me, I’d be looking at computers, professional equipment, development hardware, creator tools, and other productivity-enhancing technology as categories worth encouraging, not burdening.

Because those are the tools that help people build modern careers.

Those are the tools that make coders, editors, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and global freelancers more competitive.

And if you want a country to level up economically, helping the population access those tools feels like a much more forward-looking move than making them more expensive.

The second part of that strategy, at least in my view, would be attracting more manufacturing and production investment into Colombia itself.

Same time zone as North America.
Competitive labor costs.
Trainable workforce.
Geographic advantages.
Closer supply chains.

Those are real assets.

Because in the long run, expanding access and expanding productive capacity usually generate far more economic upside than simply taxing more small imported parcels.

That’s my take.

And whether you agree or not, I think that’s why this rule has created such a big conversation among expats, digital workers, and people who depend on international commerce to make daily life function a little more smoothly.

Colombia is still an incredible place to live.

That hasn’t changed.

The people, the culture, the food, the lifestyle, the affordability in many areas, the beauty of the country — all of that is still very real.

But policies change.
Tax rules change.
Import rules change.
And part of living abroad well is understanding how those changes affect normal life.

This one matters because it’s not just some abstract economic reform.

It changes what happens when you try to buy a supplement.
Or a microphone accessory.
Or a hard drive.
Or a computer part.
Or a little specialty item you used to order without thinking twice.

That’s why expats notice it.

So the takeaway is simple:

The old under-$200 comfort zone is gone.
The new reality starts at $50.
And if you live in Colombia and depend on imported goods, it’s worth being more strategic now than you used to be.

Not because Colombia suddenly stopped working.

But because living abroad well is often about understanding the small policy shifts before they quietly start charging you 19%.