The number nearly every page still gets wrong
Search for the Indian customs duty-free allowance and you will be told ₹50,000. Airline pages say it. Travel blogs say it. Some airport signage still says it.
It was correct until 2 February 2026. On that date the Baggage Rules, 2026 came into force, replacing the 2016 rules that had stood for almost a decade, and the general free allowance rose to ₹75,000. The allowance for a tourist of foreign origin went from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 at the same time.
That is a meaningful difference — ₹25,000 of extra headroom is worth ₹9,625 in duty you no longer pay — and it is the first thing the calculator above corrects.
The second thing, which is subtler and costs more
In February 2026 a wave of coverage announced that India had cut customs duty on personal imports to a flat 10%. That is true, and it does not apply to the suitcase you are carrying.
The cut was to heading 9804 of the Customs Tariff, which covers goods imported for personal use by post, air cargo or courier. Goods you carry in your own baggage sit under heading 9803, and that rate was left alone. The amendment made to Notification No. 26/2016-Customs on the same day was consequential only — it swapped the reference to the 2016 rules for the 2026 rules and changed nothing about the 35% effective rate.
So carried baggage above your allowance is still 38.5%: 35% basic customs duty plus a social welfare surcharge at 10% of the duty.
The useful consequence is worth acting on rather than just knowing. Once your allowance is spent, a large single item can genuinely be cheaper posted to yourself at roughly 11% than carried at 38.5%. The calculator works out where that crossover sits for your remaining allowance, because it moves as your allowance is used up.
The allowance is not the only test
The mistake in most online customs calculators is treating this as one subtraction: total value, minus allowance, times a rate. Three things break that.
Some goods get no allowance at all. Annexure-I lists what your ₹75,000 cannot be set against — firearms, gold and silver other than ornaments, drink beyond two litres, tobacco beyond the limits, and flat-panel televisions. A ₹70,000 television is fully dutiable while a ₹70,000 watch is fully covered. Same money, same suitcase, entirely different outcome.
Quantity limits and value limits are separate tests on the same bottle. Two litres of whisky is within the quantity limit, so it clears — but it is not a bonus concession sitting outside the allowance. Its value counts against your ₹75,000 like anything else. The third litre fails the quantity test, drops out of the allowance pool entirely, and is charged at 150%.
Jewellery is relieved by weight, not by value. Forty grams for a female passenger and twenty for everyone else, after a year abroad. The old rupee caps that used to sit alongside those weights were abolished in 2026, which is the single most valuable change in the new rules for anyone carrying family gold.
The calculator models all three separately, which is why it can tell you that your two bottles of Scotch have used a fifth of your allowance before you have declared anything else.
Cash: two thresholds, either one of which catches you
There is no limit on how much foreign currency you may bring into India. There is only a point at which you must declare it, and this is where people trip.
You must file a Currency Declaration Form if either of these is true:
- Your foreign currency notes alone exceed USD 5,000 or equivalent
- Your notes and traveller’s cheques together exceed USD 10,000 or equivalent
Either one triggers it. You do not need to breach both, and a traveller carrying USD 6,000 in cash and nothing else is over the first test while comfortably under the second.
Indian rupees work differently. They are capped rather than declarable: ₹25,000 per person, in or out. Exceeding that is not a form you failed to fill in — it is a prohibition, and the notes are liable to seizure.
Keep your copy of the declaration. It is what lets you take the unspent balance back out when you leave, and without it you can be stopped on the way home with money you brought in perfectly legitimately.
Declaring is now something you do before you fly
The Customs Baggage (Declaration and Processing) Regulations, 2026 came in alongside the new Baggage Rules and made the declaration electronic. If you are carrying dutiable, restricted or prohibited goods, you file through ICEGATE or the ATITHI app — and you can do it up to three days before you land.
Filing in advance is the single thing that most shortens the queue, because the assessment is in the system before you reach the counter.
Then walk the red channel. Green is not the fast lane; it is a formal declaration that you have nothing to declare. Making that declaration while carrying dutiable goods is a mis-declaration under the Customs Act, 1962, with confiscation under section 111 and a penalty under section 112 on top of the duty you owed anyway.
One thing to do on the way out, not the way in
If you are taking anything valuable and portable out of India — a camera, a laptop, jewellery you already own — get an export certificate from customs before you leave.
Customs have no way of telling whether the expensive kit in your bag was bought abroad last week or carried out of India last month. The certificate records the make, model and serial number, costs nothing, and takes a few minutes. Without it, you can find yourself paying 38.5% on your own belongings.
If you are moving back rather than visiting,
moving back to India
covers the tax side of the same journey, and the Transfer of Residence limits above are the customs half of it. If you are sending money rather than goods,
TCS on foreign remittance
explains what India collects when money leaves — and, more usefully for most NRIs, why nothing is collected on money coming in. And if you are pricing the whole trip rather than just the bags, the
door-to-door trip cost calculator
covers everything from your postcode to their PIN code.
