If you are in Australia shopping for a HÅG Capisco, you will find a site called HÅG Office. It shows Australian dollars. It shows a lower number than ours. On the Capisco 8106 in Gabriel Select wool it shows $1,577.00 AUD, against our $1,858.00.
Underneath that number, in small grey type, sit two words: Taxes excluded.
Those two words are the whole article. They mean the price you are looking at is not the price you will pay, and the gap is not small. We configured their chairs, ran a real freight quote to a Sydney address, and added the duty, GST and clearance that the Australian Border Force charges on arrival.
Every configuration they sell lands in Australia costing more than buying the same chair here. The one that looks $281 cheaper arrives $307 dearer.
We are the exclusive Australian distributor for Flokk, which owns HÅG, so we obviously have an interest in what you decide. Nothing below asks you to trust us. It is arithmetic against published government rates, and we show you how to run it yourself at the end.
The two words
Australian retail pricing has a convention so universal that most people have never consciously noticed it: the number on the page is the number you pay. That is not politeness. Under the Australian Consumer Law a business must display the total price as a single figure, and that figure has to include all taxes, duties and unavoidable fees. GST must be included in prices displayed to consumers.
HÅG Office's Australian storefront shows AUD prices with "Taxes excluded" beneath them.
We are not going to tell you they have broken any law. They are a Belgian company and whether the ACL reaches them is a question for lawyers, not for a chair shop. We will tell you the practical consequence, which is not in dispute: you cannot compare their number with an Australian retailer's number. One is a total. The other is a subtotal.
To their credit, the disclosure is there, and their logo carries the line "independently owned and operated by idyllic bv". They are not hiding anything. They are simply not doing the sum for you.
What the border adds
Import a consignment worth more than AUD $1,000 and four things happen.
Customs duty, 5%. Height-adjustable swivel office chairs classify to tariff heading 9401.31 or 9401.39. The general rate in Schedule 3 of the Australian Customs Tariff is 5%. Canada is the only origin with a free rate at that heading, and the Capisco is made in Norway.
GST, 10% — but not on what you would expect. The ABF charges GST on the Value of the Taxable Importation, which it defines as the customs value plus any duty payable plus what you paid to transport and insure the goods to Australia. You pay GST on the freight. You pay GST on the duty. Every extra dollar of shipping costs you $1.10.
Import processing charge, $152.00. Flat, for an electronic declaration on a consignment at or above $1,000. It is $192 on paper. Below $1,000 it is nil, which is why people whose only importing experience is a $60 pair of headphones get caught.
A customs broker. Usually $80–$150 to lodge the declaration. Not a government charge, just an unavoidable one unless you want to do it yourself.
A real freight quote, not a guess
We did not estimate the shipping. We put a Capisco 8106 through their checkout to a residential address in Castle Hill, NSW 2154, on 14 September 2026. The freight came back at $174.00.
That $174 is not just $174. Because the ABF includes transport in the GST base, the freight itself attracts $17.40 of GST on top. You are taxed on the postage.
The table
Their Australian prices as displayed on 14 September 2026, against ours, using the real $174 freight quote. The customs broker fee is excluded entirely — an assumption that favours them by another $80 to $150.
| Fabric | HÅG Office (taxes excluded) |
Freight | Duty 5% | GST 10% | Clearance | Landed | Chair Dinkum |
You pay extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel Select wool | $1,577.00 | $174.00 | $78.85 | $182.99 | $152.00 | $2,164.84 | $1,858.00 | +$306.84 |
| Gabriel Capture wool | $1,672.00 | $174.00 | $83.60 | $192.96 | $152.00 | $2,274.56 | $2,097.90 | +$176.66 |
| Camira Oceanic | $1,672.00 | $174.00 | $83.60 | $192.96 | $152.00 | $2,274.56 | $2,097.90 | +$176.66 |
| Paloma Soft leather | $2,072.00 | $174.00 | $103.60 | $234.96 | $152.00 | $2,736.56 | $2,606.40 | +$130.16 |
Our prices are GST inclusive and delivered. Some fabric and base combinations are held in Sydney and some are a factory order — ask us and we will tell you which yours is before you pay for anything.
The part that is almost funny
HÅG Office publishes a best-price guarantee on their Capisco pages: find the same chair cheaper somewhere else and they will match it, then take a further 5% off.
So send them our $1,858 and ask them to honour it.
They match it. They knock off 5%. Your chair is now $1,765.10 — a real $92.90 saving on the sticker, and it feels like a win.
Then it ships.
| Customs value (our price, matched, less 5%) | $1,765.10 |
| Freight and insurance | $174.00 |
| Customs duty at 5% | $88.25 |
| Value of the Taxable Importation | $2,027.35 |
| GST at 10% | $202.74 |
| Import processing charge | $152.00 |
| Landed cost | $2,382.09 |
| Chair Dinkum, delivered | $1,858.00 |
| You pay extra | +$524.09 |
Here is the mechanism, and it applies to every overseas seller with a price-match policy.
Our $1,858 is an Australian retail price. It already contains GST. When they match it they set the customs value of your chair at an Australian, GST-inclusive figure — and the Australian border then charges duty on that inflated base and GST on top of it again. You are taxed twice on the same tax, and the 5% sweetener does not come close to covering it.
A best-price guarantee that ignores the destination country's import regime is not a discount. On a chair over $1,000 coming into Australia, it is a surcharge.
Three to six weeks, and what else changes
Their Capisco pages state Shipping: 3 – 6 Weeks. That is the build time on a made-to-order chair, before international freight and before customs clearance. Realistically you are two months from order to sitting on it.
We hold 34 Capiscos in Sydney across a range of fabrics. Not every combination — we will say plainly which ones are on the floor and which are a factory order — but the ones we have, you sit on this week.
Three other things change when your seller is 16,000 km away.
Most Capiscos cannot be returned at all
Their policy gives you 14 days from receipt, and you pay the return freight to Bierbeek, Belgium. It also excludes custom-made chairs and chairs configured with fabrics outside the standard collection.
The Capisco is a configured chair. You choose the fabric, the colour, the frame, the gas lift. Order one built to your specification, decide you do not get on with it, and you may have no return right at all. Where you do, you are shipping a bulky chair from Australia to Belgium at your own cost. Their policy quotes a maximum of €98 per chair for European returns. Australia to Belgium is not a European return.
There is also a 14-day window to report transport damage in writing. On a chair with a three to six week build plus international freight, watch the calendar.
The warranty covers the part, not getting it to you
HÅG's warranty is genuinely good and we are not going to run it down: 10 years against material and manufacturing faults in normal use up to nine hours a day, five years beyond that, with spare parts guaranteed for at least 10 years from the production date.
Read the exclusions, though. The warranty covers necessary spare parts. It expressly excludes labour and transport costs.
Picture the actual failure. Year three, the gas lift stops holding height — the single most common thing to go on any office chair. You are entitled to a replacement gas lift. You are not entitled to have it shipped to Australia, and you are not entitled to have anyone fit it. HÅG Office's warranty page routes claims back to the reseller you bought from: a company in Belgium, operating under Belgian law.
We hold Capisco gas lifts, footrings, castors and glides in Sydney. That is not a moral argument, it is a logistics one. The part is a domestic courier away instead of an international freight booking, and there is a phone number here that a person answers.
Your Australian Consumer Law rights do not travel
You have consumer guarantees under Australian law, and they are strong — in places stronger than any manufacturer warranty. They attach to suppliers carrying on business in Australia.
Idyllic BV is a Belgian company and its terms of service are governed by Belgian law. You may well have rights in principle. What you will not have is a cheap, practical way to enforce them from Sydney. A dispute that is one phone call and a courier here becomes correspondence in a foreign jurisdiction.
That is the real asymmetry. Not that the seller is dishonest — we have no reason to think they are — but that the entire cost of holding them to anything falls on you.
The question worth asking
Strip out the arithmetic and every difference in this article comes down to one thing.
When something breaks, who is in your country, holding the part, and answering the phone?
That is not a question about who is authorised and who is not. It is a question about distance. A gas lift that fails in year three is a five-minute job with the part on a shelf in Sydney, and a month of email and an international freight bill with the part on a shelf in Belgium. The chair is identical. The day you need it fixed is not.
Ask it of us too. If we cannot answer it properly for the chair you are looking at, we do not deserve the order.
When you should buy from them
We would rather write this than have you think we cannot.
Buy the imported chair if the configuration you want genuinely is not available here and you care about it enough to accept the trade-offs. Buy it if you are buying something under $1,000, where no duty applies, no import processing charge applies, and GST is collected at the checkout. Buy it if you are comfortable being your own warranty department and the gap after the full landed-cost sum is still worth it to you.
For a Capisco over $1,000, at today's prices and with a real freight quote, that gap does not exist in their favour. Exchange rates move and so do prices, so run the sum when you are ready to buy, not from this article in six months.
Do the sum yourself
Do not take our word for any of it.
- Configure the exact chair on their site. Note the price and the words under it.
- Put it through their checkout with your real address to get a real freight figure. Do not use a "from" price.
- Add 5% of the chair price. That is your duty.
- Add the chair price, the duty and the freight together, then take 10% of that total. That is your GST.
- Add $152 for the import processing charge.
- Add $80–$150 for a customs broker.
- Configure the identical chair with us, and compare the two totals.
If we lose that comparison, buy theirs. We would rather you bought a Capisco from Belgium than talked yourself out of a Capisco altogether.
Found one cheaper? Send us the link.
Send us the configuration and the price from any overseas site. We will tell you whether it is genuinely the same chair, we will do the landed-cost sum with you, and where we can move on price, we will.
We are never going to be the cheapest number on the internet. We are trying to be the cheapest chair that actually ends up in your office, with someone here when it needs something. Browse the HÅG Capisco 8106, the rest of the HÅG range, or read our Capisco buying guide and our guide to HÅG spare parts in Australia.
Frequently asked questions
Why does HÅG Office show Australian dollar prices lower than Australian retailers?
Their Australian prices are displayed with taxes excluded. Australian retailers display a single total price including GST. The two figures are not comparable: theirs is a subtotal before the Australian duty, GST and customs clearance that you pay on import.
Do I pay GST and duty on a chair imported from Europe?
Yes, on any consignment valued over AUD $1,000. Customs duty on height-adjustable swivel office chairs is 5% under tariff heading 9401.31 or 9401.39. GST is 10%, calculated on the customs value plus the duty plus the freight and insurance, not on the chair price alone.
How much is the Australian import processing charge?
$152.00 for an electronic import declaration on a consignment valued at or above $1,000, or $192.00 for a documentary lodgement. There is no charge at or below $1,000.
How much does HÅG Office charge to ship a Capisco to Australia?
A Capisco 8106 quoted through their checkout to a residential address in Castle Hill, NSW on 14 September 2026 returned freight of $174.00. Because the Australian Border Force includes transport in the GST base, that freight attracts a further $17.40 of GST on arrival.
Is HÅG Office the same company as HÅG?
No. HÅG Office is operated by Idyllic BV, a Belgian company, and its own logo carries the line "independently owned and operated by idyllic bv". HÅG is a brand owned by the Flokk group.
Does HÅG Office's best price guarantee save money in Australia?
Not on a chair over $1,000. Matching an Australian retail price sets the customs value at an Australian, GST-inclusive figure, and duty, GST and the import processing charge are then applied on top of it. On a Capisco 8106 matched against our $1,858, the landed cost works out at $2,382.09, which is $524.09 more than buying locally.
Will my HÅG warranty be honoured if I import the chair myself?
HÅG's warranty covers material and manufacturing faults and necessary spare parts, and expressly excludes labour and transport costs. HÅG Office's warranty page directs claims to the reseller you purchased from. If that reseller is in Belgium, the part may be covered, but shipping it to Australia and having it fitted are at your cost.
Can I return a configured Capisco to HÅG Office?
Their policy allows 14 days from receipt with the customer paying return shipping to Belgium, but excludes custom-made chairs and chairs configured with fabrics outside the standard collection. Most Capiscos are configured chairs.
How long does a Capisco take to arrive from HÅG Office?
Their product pages state shipping of three to six weeks. That is the build time, before international freight and customs clearance.
