If you ask ten kei truck owners what they paid in customs duty, you'll get answers ranging from "nothing" to "2.5%" to "25%." They're not lying. They're describing three different things and calling them the same thing.
Let me separate them, because this is the single most confused topic in kei importing, and getting it wrong can blow up your budget by thousands of dollars.
Three different rules people mix up
There are three separate federal rules in play when you import a kei truck. Each does one thing. People collapse them into one "import fee" in their heads, and that's where the confusion starts.
- The customs duty (tariff) — what you pay Customs as a percentage of the vehicle's value. This is either 2.5% or 25%, and which one depends on classification.
- The 25-year rule — a NHTSA/EPA exemption from safety and emissions compliance. It has nothing to do with the tariff.
- The 2025 auto tariff — a separate, newer 25% tariff that exempts vehicles over 25 years old.
The mistake almost everyone makes: assuming the 25-year rule (#2) wipes out the customs duty (#1). It does not. Age exempts you from compliance paperwork. It does not exempt you from the tariff.
The Chicken Tax: why trucks are different
The reason a kei truck can owe 25% while a kei car owes 2.5% comes down to a 1964 trade fight that had nothing to do with vehicles.
In the early 1960s, Europe slapped tariffs on American frozen chicken. The US retaliated with a 25% tariff on imported light trucks. The chicken dispute faded; the truck tariff never went away. Sixty years later it still shapes which Japanese trucks you can buy.
Under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, vehicles "for the transport of goods" fall under heading 8704 and carry the 25% Chicken Tax. Passenger vehicles fall under 8703 at 2.5%. A kei truck — a small vehicle built to haul cargo — looks like an 8704 truck on paper.
So why do so many people pay 2.5%?
Because classification is not always clear-cut, and in practice many kei trucks clear customs as passenger or "other" vehicles at the 2.5% rate. Whether a given truck lands at 2.5% or 25% can come down to its configuration, how it's documented, and how your customs broker classifies it at entry.
Here's the honest version: you cannot assume 2.5% in advance. Some importers reliably clear kei trucks at 2.5%. Others — and some specific configurations — get assessed the full 25%. On a $7,000 truck that's the difference between a $175 duty and a $1,750 duty. Our import cost calculator now lets you toggle between the two so you can budget for both.
The 25-year rule does not touch any of this
Say it with me: the 25-year rule is a safety and emissions exemption. When a vehicle is at least 25 years old (measured from its build date, not model year), NHTSA stops requiring it to meet Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and the EPA stops requiring emissions compliance. That's the entire scope of the rule.
It does not reduce, waive, or change your customs duty. A pristine 1999 Honda Acty is exempt from FMVSS — and still owes the applicable tariff. People see "exempt" and assume it means "free." It means "you don't have to install airbags and a catalytic converter to match US-spec," nothing more.
What about the 2025 Trump auto tariff?
In April 2025 the administration added a 25% tariff on imported automobiles. Understandably, the kei community panicked. The good news, per Minitrucks.net: that tariff exempts vehicles manufactured more than 25 years ago. Because every legally importable kei truck is already 25+ years old, the new tariff doesn't apply to our corner of the market.
But notice the trap: that exemption is about the 2025 tariff, not the Chicken Tax. The Chicken Tax has no age exemption. So "my truck is exempt from the new tariff" is true and "my truck is exempt from all duty" is false, at the same time.
How to actually budget for this
Don't anchor on the best case. Here's the realistic approach:
- Budget for 25% duty, then treat 2.5% as a pleasant surprise if it lands there.
- Ask your importer directly how they classify the specific truck you're buying, and whether their kei trucks typically clear at 2.5% or 25%. A straight answer here tells you a lot about the importer.
- Use our calculator with the Chicken Tax toggle to see both totals side by side.
- Remember the duty is on the vehicle value, so a cheaper truck means a smaller absolute duty either way.
I don't own a kei truck — I'm still holding out for a Beat, and I learned to read fine print on my dad's '95 Carry paperwork — but I've read enough import documents to tell you the people who get burned are the ones who budgeted for 2.5% and got billed 25%. Plan for the tax that's named after a chicken, and you'll never be the one caught short.
For the rest of the process, see our step-by-step importing guide and the 25-year rule explainer.