Understand the duty components that make up landed cost, how they stack, and how the HS code you declare drives every one of them.
| Component | Applied to | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Assessable value | CIF value + 1% landing charges | The base for everything below |
| Basic Customs Duty (BCD) | Assessable value | Rate set by the HS code and origin |
| Social Welfare Surcharge | BCD amount | Typically 10% of the BCD |
| IGST | Assessable value + BCD + surcharge | Usually recoverable as input credit |
| Compensation cess | Same base as IGST | Applies to specific goods only |
| Anti-dumping duty | Assessable value | Product and origin specific, where notified |
A single digit changes the applicable tariff line and the rate with it.
Preferential rates under an FTA can cut the rate to nil, with a valid certificate of origin.
Some goods attract concessional rates when imported for a specified purpose.
Anti-dumping and safeguard duties apply to named products from named origins.
Customs duty is the tax levied on goods when they cross a national border. The rate depends on the HS classification, the country of origin and any trade agreement in force.
Duty is applied to the assessable value — generally CIF value plus landing charges. Basic Customs Duty is applied first, then Social Welfare Surcharge, then IGST on the duty-inclusive value.
BCD is the tariff protecting domestic industry and is a real cost. IGST is a tax that a registered importer can usually claim back as input credit, so its cash-flow impact differs from its cost impact.
Yes — through correct classification, preferential rates under a free trade agreement with a valid certificate of origin, or duty exemption schemes for goods that will be re-exported.
The mental model that causes most landed-cost errors is that duty is a percentage. It is a sequence of components, applied in order, each to a base that already includes the ones before it. That compounding is why a headline rate consistently understates the actual cost, and why two products with similar headline rates can land very differently once cess, surcharge and integrated tax have been applied over them.
| Step | Applied to | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Assessable value | Transaction value plus freight and insurance | Adjusted under valuation rules |
| Basic customs duty | Assessable value | The rate attached to the tariff line |
| Surcharge | The duty amount | A duty on the duty, not on the goods |
| Integrated tax | Value plus the duties above | Creditable for registered businesses |
| Compensation cess | Same base, specified goods only | Applies to a defined list |
| Trade remedies | Specified goods and origins | Origin-specific and can change quickly |
Not every component is a cost to every importer, and conflating the two produces models that are wrong in both directions. Basic duty and its surcharge are real costs to everyone. Integrated tax is generally creditable against output liability for a registered business, so for them it is a cash-flow item; for anyone who cannot claim the credit it is a genuine cost. The gap between those two positions is frequently large enough to change which origin is cheapest.
A trade agreement reduces the basic duty for goods that satisfy its rule of origin for that specific tariff line — a change in classification, a value-addition threshold, or a named process. The certificate evidences the claim; it does not create it. Verification can come years later, the liability sits with the importer who claimed the preference, and what is asked for at that point is production evidence rather than the certificate itself.
Run the landed cost with the duty component varied by a few percentage points, and again assuming a preference claim fails. If the order only works at one specific outcome, that is a policy exposure inside your margin rather than a margin.
Every rate attaches to a tariff line, so classification is not a preliminary to the duty question — it is the duty question.
Learn more ›Comparable consignments in the record show which line an administration accepted for goods like yours.
Learn more ›Duty is one layer. Freight, handling and the inland legs often move the answer more.
Learn more ›Remedies are notified by origin and can arrive between order and arrival.
Learn more ›Trade data rewards a short, boring discipline far more than it rewards technique. Four steps cover most of it, and skipping any one of them is where the confident wrong conclusions come from. Fix the classification first, because every filter, every duty figure and every price comparison downstream is keyed to the tariff line and inherits any error in it. Then read at least three years, so that seasonality and trend can be told apart rather than conflated. Then exclude the most recent one or two periods, which are still filling in as late filings arrive. Then separate value from volume, because a value movement can be price, quantity or a change of mix inside the line, and those point in different directions.
| Step | What it prevents | Cost of skipping it |
|---|---|---|
| Confirm the tariff line | Filtering the wrong product | Every downstream figure is wrong by an unknown amount |
| Read three years | Mistaking a season for a trend | Strategy built on a cyclical high or low |
| Drop the incomplete tail | Reading reporting lag as decline | Writing off buyers who never stopped buying |
| Separate value from volume | Reading price as demand | Investing against a movement that was not demand |
| Check the counterparty | Acting on an unverified name | Credit or capacity committed to a company with no history |
| Record the period and source | Unrepeatable analysis | Figures nobody can reconcile three months later |
The material here is one layer of a set that is meant to be used together. The country pages establish the shape of a market from official reported figures. The HS chapter pages take a single classification down to product level. The industry hubs group the chapters that make up a real industry and sum them, because almost no industry is one chapter. The India location pages read the national record as places, using the clearance point as a geographic signal. And the trade role pages take one job at a time — building an importer list, checking an exporter, reading a lane — and set out the signals that matter for it.
Reported totals, partner markets and chapter breakdown for 99 markets.
Learn more ›All 98 chapters, each with the markets that trade it.
Learn more ›Thirty-eight industries, each summed across the chapters it spans.
Learn more ›Seventy-nine trading places, their gateways and their clusters.
Learn more ›The same record read as a buyer list, a supplier check or a lane analysis.
Learn more ›Classification, documentation, pricing, sourcing and compliance in practice.
Learn more ›Customs records cover goods that physically crossed a border and were declared to an authority. They do not cover services. They do not cover domestic trade, so a business selling mainly inside its own market will look far smaller here than it is. They carry no margin, no contract terms, no payment behaviour and no intent. Coverage of counterparty names varies by jurisdiction and is not universal, data arrives on a lag, and published periods are revised as corrections come in.
None of that reduces what the record is good for, and stating it plainly is what makes the rest credible. Used within its limits, customs data is one of the very few commercial sources where the underlying event actually happened, was documented at the time, and was documented under legal obligation rather than for promotional purposes. That is a rare property, and it is worth not overselling.
Before relying on any trade dataset — ours or anyone else's — ask which markets are covered at which depth, what the lag is in each, how company names were matched, and what happens to a historical series across an HS revision. The answers tell you more than any headline figure.