The words trade runs on, the reference material behind the calculators, the trade notes we write when we get something wrong ourselves, and every route to a person. Every country-specific line below is generated from the same rules the calculators cost against, so this page and the tools cannot disagree.
Who pays for what, when your buyer takes over, and which two make you buy insurance.
Read it →Where we have checked the rules ourselves and where the AI estimates. Read before quoting a firm price.
Read it →A Credit is one AI answer. Which actions spend one, which are free forever, and why the calculators never cost anything.
Read it →The modules not built yet, and the real thing each one is waiting on rather than a date we would miss.
Read it →Each definition is true in every country. The In India line under it is what India’s own rules do with it — generated, not written, so it cannot drift from the calculators.
The international product number. The first six digits are agreed worldwide by the World Customs Organization; each country adds its own digits after those six. It decides your duty rate, your licences and your paperwork.
In India — 8 digits, ITC-HS, set by DGFT / CBIC.
One of eleven three-letter rules saying who pays for what and at which point the goods stop being your risk. It is not a delivery address; it is a division of cost and liability, and two of the eleven oblige the seller to buy insurance.
Free On Board. The value of the goods loaded at the port of export, without the freight or the insurance onward.
In India — export refunds are worked out on this figure.
Cost, Insurance and Freight. FOB plus the freight and insurance to the destination port.
In India — duty is charged on an assessable value built from this.
The figure the destination’s customs applies the duty percentage to. Get this wrong and every line below it is wrong.
In India — CIF plus what the statute adds — the customs value, never the invoice.
The tax the destination charges for letting the goods in. Nobody gets it back, anywhere. It is a real cost and it belongs in your selling price.
The order the levies are applied in, and what each one is charged on. Some countries charge a single line; others stack several, one of them on the total of the others. The sequence is the calculation.
In India — 4 levies: Basic customs duty → Agriculture levy → Health levy → Social Welfare Surcharge — the last charged on the total of the ones above it.
A consumption tax charged at the border that a registered business normally reclaims. Whether it exists, and what it is charged on, is decided entirely by the destination.
In India — IGST, on the assessable value, and again on the duty.
The mechanism that gives that tax back. Where a country charges no border tax there is nothing to reclaim, and an exemption that stops the tax arising is not the same thing as a refund.
In India — called Input Tax Credit (ITC).
Everything the goods have cost you by the time they are in your warehouse: purchase price, freight, insurance, duty, clearance and inland transport. Not the invoice value, and never the invoice value.
An export invoice that carries no consumption tax. Some countries want an instrument filed first; most simply zero-rate it.
In India — Under LUT or bond — no tax on the export invoice; With payment of IGST, refunded after shipment.
What identifies you to a customs authority. It is separate from your tax number, and you need both.
In India — IEC code, alongside your GSTIN.
Money back from your own government for exporting. Plenty of countries offer none, and a calculator that invents one is worse than a calculator that says so.
In India — RoDTEP and Duty drawback.
The rate customs values your consignment at. It is set by the authority, not by the market and not by your bank — routinely three different numbers on the same day.
In India — a rate published monthly, and it is not the market rate.
A rule requiring an exporter to be paid within a set time and prove it. It is exchange-control regulation rather than commerce, and most countries impose no such rule at all.
In India — 9 months from shipment, evidenced by BRC / eBRC (RBI / FEMA).
The delivery terms get a section of their own, with all eleven side by side — who pays for what.
SWS is charged on the aggregate of customs duties, not on Basic Duty alone. If your spreadsheet does the latter, every import you have costed is wrong — and always in the same direction.
Read the note →A GST-registered importer reclaims IGST as input credit. Basic Duty, AIDC, cess and surcharge are gone forever. Treating those two the same way guarantees you price wrong.
Read the note →You realise export proceeds at the buying rate and buy freight at the selling rate. Using one rate for both hides a real cost that lands entirely on your margin.
Read the note →An HS code is half an answer until you say which country will read it. Six digits are agreed worldwide. The digits after them, the duty rate and the licence are written by the country you file in — and there are not even the same number of digits from one country to the next.
Read the note →India charges IGST on the assessable value and again on the duty. The EU, the UK, the UAE and Singapore charge VAT or GST on CIF plus duty. The United States charges nothing of the kind at the border at all. One spreadsheet shape cannot be right in all three places.
Read the note →Indian exporters must realise export proceeds within nine months of shipment and hold the bank certificate that proves it. Of the other jurisdictions we model, not one imposes the same deadline. Carrying that clock abroad and leaving it behind at home are both expensive.
Read the note →Notes tied to one country are labelled. We keep them all in the list on purpose — the mistake in an Indian worked example is usually the same mistake in a German one.
Buying questions — trials, credits, seats, refunds — are answered on pricing.
Ask for help or report a problem. It goes straight to the team and we track it until it is fixed.
Get help →A question about a route, a code, or whether we cover your country. Most replies come the same or next working day.
Send a message →The slowest we let anything sit, how urgent we treat it, and who it goes to next if we are slow.
Read the policy →There is also a chat assistant in the corner of every page. It answers from this same material and can raise a ticket for you if it cannot.
No account, no card. If the code it returns is the one you would have used, the rest is worth three days of your time.
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