A duty jurisdiction, not a VAT one
Bermuda runs its public finances differently from most markets a United States supplier ships into. There is no VAT and no income tax, and customs duty at the border is the government’s main source of revenue. For a buyer that has one clean consequence: the tax event happens once, at import, on the goods themselves. Because there is no VAT, there is no input tax to reclaim later and no filing cycle to work through afterward. The figure settled with your broker at clearance is the figure, and it belongs in the material budget rather than buried somewhere in overheads where nobody will find it again.
What changed on 1 July 2025
On 1 July 2025 the Bermuda Government reduced customs duty on building materials and supplies to 10 percent. The reduction was announced as covering items previously charged above 10 percent, and the published examples name tile alongside paint, steel, rebar, drywall, doors, windows and air conditioners. If your budget was prepared before that date, or copied from a supplier page written before it, your duty assumption is probably too high. That is worth re-checking before you compare landed prices, because a stale rate can quietly disqualify the right material for entirely the wrong reason.
Where your particular paving sits
Honesty is more useful than a headline. The reduction is written around building materials and supplies, and tile appears in the published examples, but the line that applies to your consignment depends on how the goods are classified on the entry. That is your broker’s call against the tariff, not something a supplier should promise from a distance. Start from ex-yard paving prices for Bermuda, then have your broker confirm both the rate and the classification in writing before the budget hardens into a client figure.
What the duty is charged on
Duty is assessed against a declared value, and how that value is built up affects the final figure. Ask your broker to confirm, for your entry, whether freight and insurance sit inside the assessed value or outside it, and make sure the invoice presents goods and charges clearly rather than as one lump. A tidy invoice is not cosmetic. It removes the guesswork that turns a routine clearance into a query, and a query into a week on the wharf.
- Show the goods value, the freight and any insurance on separate lines.
- Describe the material plainly: stone type, format, thickness and quantity.
- Match the packing list to the invoice item by item.
- State the country of origin consistently across every document.
The lines that sit beside duty
Duty is the largest single addition but it is never the only one. A landed number for Bermuda assembles from the stone itself, ocean freight to Hamilton, the duty entry, brokerage, wharf handling and the road leg to site. None of that is exotic, and leaving one line out is how a budget slips by a margin nobody can explain later.
- The stone, priced ex-yard by format and thickness.
- Ocean freight, which moves with equipment type and demand.
- Duty, plus the broker’s fee for making the entry.
- Wharf handling and collection charges from the carrier.
- Trucking to site, quoted against real access rather than an average.
Currency is one less variable
The Bermuda dollar is pegged one to one with the United States dollar, which removes a layer of budget noise that other markets carry as a matter of course. A quote issued in dollars reads straight across, and a figure agreed weeks before a sailing does not drift because of an exchange move between agreement and clearance. It is a small mercy, but a real one on work priced months ahead of delivery, and it means the only moving parts left in your landed number are quantity, freight and access.
Phasing an order under a lower rate
A lower duty rate changes how sensible it is to bring material in one consignment rather than three. Consolidation still saves freight and handling, but the argument for it is now less about avoiding a punitive rate and more about pallet economics and site storage. Weigh those against what a Bermuda plot can actually hold without the stone getting in the way of the work.
- Covered storage on site for material that will not be laid for weeks.
- Cash flow, since duty falls due at clearance and not at completion.
- Breakage risk when pallets get moved twice before laying.
- Whether a later phase might change format, thickness or finish.
What we quote and what we do not
We can put firm numbers against the stone, the packing and the freight leg, and we can show where our published ranges sit before any island charge applies. The square-foot figures we keep public are the honest starting line for that conversation. What we will not do is state your duty outcome as settled fact, because the entry is made in Bermuda against your documents, not ours.
- From us: material price, format, thickness, pallet counts and freight.
- From your broker: classification, rate, assessed value and entry timing.
- From your trucker: the road leg, priced against the real approach.
- From your installer: bedding, laying and a sensible waste allowance.
Build the landed figure line by line and Bermuda turns out to be a straightforward place to import stone.