In the customs & excise website, its clearly mentioned that you dont have to pay for a musical instrument which you own for your personal use (just dont admit its new ,lol), its only taxable if its a gift to someone else or if its for a somercial purpose such as selling. and btw, give the ph: number of that friend of yours, let me try to tap a few lacs from him by making some phoney calls. edit: and btw the customs duty for a guitar is only 10% (chapt.92, 9202).
The cbec website indicates 10% but another website indicates 35%. 20north.com custom duty charges on guitars is around 28%.
You are right. I would go by the CBEC website. I will just print it out and take it with me incase they give me panga....
This is the response of 20north for the customs duty they charge: Apart from the Basic duty of 10% there are other duty charges as well. Excise duty- 8% Customs cess- 3% Additional Duty-4% Excise cess-3% All this put together is what you will see in total as duty.
Hi.. I think you'll be charged around 45% customs duty when u enter India.. I have also heard that u might have to pay around 5% duty when u'll leave the us.. although I'm not really sure abt this one..I would still recommend you get the guitar though.. plannin to have one shipped as well..
it's 35% on anything that is worth more than 25000. i haven't had a problem with a guitar though. the bigger problem i've had is making sure i get it on as hand baggage. when i moved back to bombay, i dismantled my strat and my bass and had them shipped to me as cartons.