Three unrelated documents get called a customs declaration, and a search engine mixes them together. One is CBP Form 6059B, which a traveler completes when entering the United States — nothing to do with a shipped parcel. One is the CN22 or CN23 declaration, printed as PS Form 2976 or one of its variants, that physically travels on the outside of a box. One is an electronic export filing a carrier submits on the shipper's behalf once the parcel leaves the country, visible only if you're reading the tracking history closely. If a package is what brought you here, the second one is yours.
A traveler's arrival form, a parcel's declaration, and a carrier's export filing all share the phrase.
Nothing links these three beyond the words used to describe them. Who fills each one out, and what it's actually for, is different in every row.
| Document | Who fills it out | What it's for | Rides with a parcel? |
|---|---|---|---|
| CBP Form 6059B | A traveler entering the United States | Declaring goods and purchases carried in person | No — travels with a person |
| CN22 / CN23 (PS Form 2976 family) | Whoever is sending the parcel | Describing what's inside a specific box and its value, for the destination's customs authority | Yes — printed on or attached to the box |
| Electronic export declaration | The carrier, on the shipper's behalf | Reporting the export electronically to the origin country as the parcel leaves | Indirectly — it's a tracking-history event, not paper on the box |
The confusion is entirely in the shared phrase. A traveler's form, a parcel's paperwork and a carrier's electronic filing don't overlap in who uses them, when, or why — they overlap only in what people call them.
A share of the results for "customs declaration" is about Form 6059B — the declaration U.S. Customs and Border Protection issues to people arriving in the country, not to anything shipped.
It's completed by or for a traveler, on paper or through a kiosk, and lists what that person is bringing into the United States in their luggage or on themselves. A parcel moving through a carrier never touches this form, and neither does the person receiving it at the other end; that side of a shipment runs on the two documents below instead. If a result mentioning CBP or a traveler's declaration turned up while researching a shipment, it's answering a different question than the one being asked.
CN22 and CN23 are the international names for the same idea USPS turns into PS Form 2976, 2976-A and 2976-B: a description of what's inside a specific box, a value against it, and where it was made, filled in by whoever is sending it.
“a fully completed electronically generated customs form is required for international mail”
USPS, International Mail Manual §123, read 2026-09-01
A hand-written slip dropped in with the box is not what that requirement describes anymore, with one narrow exception: a paper worksheet used only at a Post Office counter, before a clerk turns it into the real, computer-generated version. One USPS service goes further still — on Priority Mail Express International, the declaration and the shipping label print as a single combined document, PS Form 2976-B, in the same pouch. That's how tightly this paperwork is bound to one specific parcel on one specific date, not a generic form anyone reuses. The field-by-field detail — what each line has to say, and how the harmonized tariff code gets built — has its own page: customs forms and HS codes. Which of CN22 or CN23 applies, and where the value line between them sits, is covered on documents for international shipping rather than repeated here.
A third filing happens with no paperwork changing hands with the shipper at all. Once a carrier has a parcel's declared contents and value on file — the same information already on the document above — it reports the export electronically to the origin country's customs system before the parcel leaves.
The Census Bureau describes its Automated Export System as the system for collecting, processing, and storing Electronic Export Information
, the U.S. side of that reporting for larger or restricted shipments. On an everyday tracking page, the same kind of event shows up as a status reading something like Export Customs Declaration Completed, logged once the parcel reaches the gateway it's leaving the country from. Nothing about it is optional, and nothing about it asks the shipper for a separate form — it's built from data already collected, filed by the carrier rather than by whoever sent the box. What that exact tracking status means and what typically follows it has its own full page: Export Customs Declaration Completed, explained.
The parcel declaration described above isn't a separate errand here: it's collected as part of buying the label, before payment, on every one of the four countries this checkout sells today — Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia — the same checkout priced out lane by lane on the DDU guide and the international shipping walkthrough. Nothing here changes who ends up owing duty at the door once the box arrives — that's a separate question, answered on what Incoterms mean.
USPS and the Census Bureau revise their own guidance without notice. Treat the descriptions above as what was published on the date shown, and check the current wording before a specific shipment depends on it.
A statement of what's crossing a border, filed with a customs authority. The exact document depends on who or what is crossing: a traveler completes CBP Form 6059B, a parcel carries a CN22/CN23-style declaration printed as PS Form 2976 or a variant, and a carrier separately files an electronic export declaration on the shipper's behalf.
For a parcel, yes — customs declaration and customs form both describe the CN22/CN23 document that travels with the box, with USPS's PS Form 2976 family as the American version of it. The term gets murkier because CBP also calls its traveler arrival document a customs declaration, and that one has nothing to do with a shipped parcel.
Yes, for any parcel crossing a border. USPS's manual requires a fully completed, electronically generated form for international mail, and private carriers require an equivalent declaration before they'll move the box. Which exact form applies and what it has to say is covered on SMKlog's customs form guide.
The carrier, not the shipper, using the same contents and value information already on the parcel's declaration. It's what shows up on a tracking page as a status like Export Customs Declaration Completed, and it requires no separate paperwork from whoever sent the box.
On the four countries it sells labels to online — Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia — yes: the declaration is filled in as part of buying the label, before payment. Every other destination still goes through a manual review, where the same document is prepared by hand.