A DDP quote is the easiest number in sourcing to say yes to: one price, delivered to your door, nothing left to arrange. What it does not say is whose name goes on the import. If the goods are cleared by the forwarder's own import entity rather than by you, you never become a party to the customs entry — and in the UK the document that import VAT recovery is built on is issued to somebody else, permanently. The freight saving is a few hundred pounds and it is printed on the quote. The exposure is 20% of goods value and it is printed nowhere. This is written primarily for UK and EU brands, where the gap is sharpest; the same structure exists in other markets in different form.
The short answer
- A DDP price bundles freight, duty and import VAT at the seller's rates and clears the goods in the seller's or its forwarder's name — so the customs entry, and every document that entry generates, belong to them rather than to you.
- In the UK the C79 certificate is the proof of import VAT paid, and it is issued only to the party named as importer whose EORI is on the declaration, regardless of whose money paid the VAT. EU member states differ in detail but hinge on the same thing: the name on the declaration.
- Illustration only: a few hundred pounds of apparent freight saving sits against 20% of goods value that has generated no import document in your name — and this only bites a VAT-registered business, which is exactly the brand that is growing.
- Ask three questions before accepting a DDP price: what is the entry reference, whose name and EORI are on it, and may I have the entry document. A supplier or forwarder who will not answer those has answered them.
The number that wins the comparison
One buyer reported the two quotes side by side: around £600 for the goods delivered DDP, against roughly £840 to bring the same shipment in under their own name. Treat that as one reported example rather than a rule — the spread depends on lane, volume and season. But the shape of it is the shape everybody meets. The DDP line is smaller, it is one number instead of four, and it arrives with nothing to organise. On a founder's spreadsheet at eleven at night, £240 of visible saving beats an invisible consideration every time.
There is a twist that makes it worse, and it comes up often. Asked to requote the same shipment DAP or FOB — the arrangements that would let the brand import in its own name — one supplier came back with exactly the same price. Not cheaper, not dearer. Identical. So the buyer was choosing between two identical prices, one of which quietly gave away the import — pushed toward the worse option only because it had been presented first and sounded simpler. More than one buyer has nearly taken the worse deal for the better-looking number.
What the terms mean as Incoterms is a separate topic and is covered elsewhere in this library. This article is about one downstream consequence of choosing DDP that almost no quotation mentions: whose name ends up on the customs entry, and what that name decides.
What a very cheap origin-side DDP rate often means
Stated neutrally, because this is a structure rather than a scandal: a low door-to-door rate quoted from the China side is frequently priced on the basis that clearance at the far end is handled through the forwarder's own import entity, or a broker's, rather than through the buyer. That entity is named as importer on the declaration. Its EORI is declared. Its deferment or duty account settles the charges. The goods then move on to you as a domestic delivery. You receive the cartons; you were never a party to the entry that brought them in.
A customs broker with decades in the trade put the underlying confusion plainly: many people saying DDP “are not actually referring to the official Incoterms at all. All they mean is that they will pay for shipping and the customs.” On a great many quotations the three letters are a pricing promise — we will absorb freight, duty and clearance into this figure — not a statement about how the import will be structured.
None of this is necessarily improper. Goods can be correctly declared, duty correctly assessed and everything correctly paid on an entry you have no part in. The point here is narrower and it survives regardless: whatever else the arrangement produces, what it produces for you is a delivery, not an import record.
Why the paperwork never arrives
A UK sole trader described it after taking delivery: “I didn't receive any paperwork for the entry in to the UK, nothing to show any VAT/Import duty was paid… Is it even legal?” That is the normal sequence. The goods turn up, on time and undamaged, and the absence only registers weeks later when someone asks for the import documentation and there is none to hand over. Nothing failed. Nothing was late. There is simply no document, because no document was ever going to be created with that brand's name on it.
The forwarder's own reply in the same thread is the tell, and it is more useful than an evasion would have been: “We will not provide relevant information because our company is the freight forwarding company responsible for transporting from China to the UK.” Read as a description of the structure rather than as a brush-off, it is accurate. They arranged carriage. Someone at the destination end cleared the goods for a customer, and that customer was them, not you.
The broker's version generalises it: whether you are entitled to any customs paperwork “will depend on who is being named as the importer. If you are not the customer of the broker performing the customs clearance it's unlikely they will give you anything.” And in a 2026 case a supplier stated the position in writing, without being asked twice: “There are no customs clearance documents for DDP… The importer of record on the DDP customs duty receipt is the customs broker, not your company name.” Say the consequence plainly, because everything else in this article follows from it: a shipment where nobody will tell you the importer's name or give you the entry document is a shipment you cannot account for, whatever else is true about it.
The UK mechanic: the C79, the EORI, and who a document belongs to
In the UK the monthly C79 certificate is the evidence that import VAT was paid and the basis on which recovery is built. The mechanic, as a broker states it, is unforgiving and entirely mechanical: “It is only issued to the person named as importer and whose EORI number is declared. It doesn't take into account who physically paid the VAT.” The certificate does not follow the money, or the commercial risk, or the intent of the parties. It follows a field on a declaration. If your EORI is not in that field, the certificate is generated for whoever's is.
The obvious substitutes do not work, and it is worth knowing why before you go hunting for them. An invoice from the customs agent is not a VAT invoice. The overseas seller cannot issue a UK VAT invoice for the import either, because it is not making a supply in the UK — it sold you goods abroad. HMRC's published internal guidance (VIT31200, updated June 2026) states that HMRC will not consider alternative evidence where a VAT invoice was not issued because the supplier did not charge VAT. And on the underlying principle, the same guidance (VIT13300) is blunt that entitlement “overrides the question of who may have paid for the supply. It also overrides the question of who may hold the relevant invoice.”
EU brands meet a different set of documents and, in several member states, postponed accounting arrangements that change the cash-flow picture — but the hinge is the same, and it is the only part of this you need to carry: the import record attaches to the party named on the declaration as importer or declarant under its own EORI, not to whoever's money moved. What follows from that for your particular business — whether it is entitled to anything, and on what evidence — is a question for your own accountant. It is not a question for your forwarder, and it is not a question for us. What a supply-chain partner can tell you is which name went on the entry.
The arithmetic, out loud
Round numbers, chosen for clarity and marked as an illustration rather than a quote. Say a shipment of £20,000 of goods. The DDP offer is £2,000 delivered, duty and taxes described as included. The own-name route is quoted at £2,300 for freight and clearance, with you paying duty and import VAT at the border yourself. On the line you can see, DDP wins by £300. Now price the line you cannot see: 20% import VAT on a customs value of roughly £21,000 is about £4,200. That is the number sitting on the other side of the £300 — and under DDP it produces no import document in your name.
There is a second piece of arithmetic that a buyer can run in ten seconds, and it is diagnostic rather than accusatory. If the entire DDP price is smaller than 20% of your goods value, the price cannot contain the import VAT that a declaration at your own commercial value would attract. In the illustration, £2,000 all-in against £4,200 of import VAT alone does not reconcile. That does not tell you what happened — you cannot see the entry, which is precisely the problem — and it is not an allegation against anybody. It tells you there is a question, and that you are structurally unable to answer it from where you are standing.
One qualifier matters enormously: this only bites a VAT-registered business. Below registration, import VAT is simply a cost like freight, and DDP's simplicity can be a perfectly fair trade for it. The trouble is the direction of travel. Registration arrives with growth, and every DDP shipment already landed is already past fixing — you cannot retro-fit a name onto an entry that has been filed. A buyer discovering this mid-thread wrote it more clearly than any adviser would: “DDP is simple but I am missing the VAT invoices and it is VAT I will never be able to claim back if I become vat registered.”
The three questions that settle it before you order
Ask for the entry or declaration reference. Ask whose name and EORI — or the member-state equivalent — is on it. Ask for the entry document itself. These are administrative facts about your own goods, not commercial secrets, and a forwarder that cleared a shipment in your name can produce all three in minutes without thinking about it. Ask them before the order, not after arrival, because after arrival you are asking someone to change something that has already happened.
A freight professional's summary is the cleanest statement of the trade-off anyone has managed: on DDP the seller gets the cheaper rate and clears in its own name under its own EORI; for the import to be recoverable against your business your details and EORI have to be on the declaration; “You can't have both.” That is not a scandal, it is a choice — and it becomes an expensive one only when it is made by default, by whoever wrote the quotation, rather than by you.
Then write the answer into the purchase order rather than leaving it in an email thread: the term, the named place, and an explicit line that the buyer is the importer of record and will be named on the declaration under its own EORI, with the commercial invoice, packing list and transport document issued to the buyer. If a supplier or forwarder will not confirm the three questions in writing at that stage, treat the silence as information. A party that will not tell you whose name is on the entry has told you it is not going to be yours.
Where SEAMDANCE fits, and where it does not
We are a buyer-side trading and supply-chain management company in Xiamen, founded in 2018. We coordinate independent specialist factories, mills and dye houses — we do not own them and we are not a factory ourselves. On this particular question we can do three things: quote on terms that leave the brand as the importer in its own name, provide the commercial documents an importer actually needs in the brand's name, and say plainly what a given price does and does not include. If you want a delivered price anyway, you can have one with the contents itemised, quoted inside 24 hours, so the word DDP is not doing work the numbers should be doing.
The limits are worth stating as clearly as the offer. We are not tax advisers. We do not file entries in your market, we do not hold your EORI, and we cannot obtain a document from a customs entry we were never party to — nor can anyone else, once it is filed. And DDP is genuinely the right answer sometimes: a small first consignment, a business not yet registered, a stock-programme order from 100 pieces where the whole tax exposure is a small number and the founder's time is not. Custom development starting at 300–500 pieces is a larger sum to be casual about. The argument here is not that DDP is wrong; it is that it should be a decision taken with the tax consequence on the table, not a default inherited from whichever quotation happened to look cheapest.
One closing line, and it is the important one. This is general information about how import declarations and the documents they generate work — it is not tax or legal advice. Rules differ by country and they change: the UK mechanics described here are not the EU's, and neither is the position in the US, Australia or anywhere else, where the same underlying issue exists in different form. Whether your business is entitled to recover anything, and what evidence it would need, is a question to confirm with your own accountant or adviser before you rely on it. What can be settled from this side is simpler and entirely within your control: making sure the name on the entry is the name you chose.