Project
Tax & Duties Transparency
Product & Growth, Laced
I designed and delivered the tax and duties trust layer for Laced's EU checkout — separating item price, shipping, and duties into clear line items and ensuring accurate messaging per market for both duty-included and duty-on-delivery models.
- I defined the rules for when duties applied, standardised checkout disclosure across UK and EU markets, aligned the logic with Finance and Legal compliance requirements, and validated refund handling when FX and duties were both in play.
- International buyers experienced fewer surprise fees and post-purchase complaints, and the duties layer launched alongside EU FX checkout without reconciliation errors.
Overview
When Laced launched EU local-currency checkout, taxes and duties had to be handled alongside FX — not bolted on afterwards. EU buyers who don't understand what they'll owe at the border, or who receive a surprise duty charge after paying, don't just abandon the specific order: they lose trust in the entire platform. I owned the tax and duties trust layer as a core part of the EU checkout programme.
The problem
Cross-border duties are the kind of problem that looks solved until it isn't. The breakdown happens in predictable ways: duties charged unexpectedly at the doorstep when checkout suggested the order was fully paid, unclear line items that blur what the buyer is actually agreeing to, and refund flows that don't account for duties paid, leaving buyers confused about what they'll get back.
On a marketplace selling high-value sneakers to EU buyers, any one of those failure modes drives both support contacts and chargebacks. The existing checkout didn't cleanly separate item price, shipping, and duties, and the messaging wasn't consistent across markets.
What I did
I treated tax and duties as a trust surface, not just a compliance requirement. The goal was that buyers should understand exactly what they're agreeing to pay — and that the checkout, confirmation email, and any refund should all tell the same story.
I worked with Finance, Legal, and Engineering to define the rules: when duties applied by market, which model applied (duty-included vs duty-on-delivery), and what that meant for checkout messaging and refund logic. I then standardised the line-item display so duties were never buried or ambiguous.
Systems I built
- Market-by-market duties rules: defined when duties were collected at checkout vs on delivery for each EU market, with clear logic for the product and engineering teams to implement
- Line-item separation: rebuilt checkout display to surface item price, shipping cost, and tax/duties as distinct, labelled line items — buyers know exactly what each element represents
- Duty-inclusive vs duty-on-delivery messaging: separate checkout messaging flows per model, tested for clarity and compliance with Finance and Legal sign-off
- Refund logic for cross-border orders: defined how refunds behaved when both FX rates and duties were involved — ensuring amounts made sense to buyers and reconciled correctly in finance systems
- Validation across markets: tested checkout scenarios across UK/EU markets before launch; worked with Finance to confirm reconciliation accuracy
Impact
EU buyers saw accurate, consistent duties information throughout the checkout journey. Surprise fee complaints and post-purchase disputes related to duties fell. The tax and duties layer launched alongside EU FX checkout without reconciliation errors — which was the minimum acceptable outcome and the result of having tested the edge cases (partial refunds, failed payments, cross-border returns) before going live.