How do duties, shipping and taxes change my pricing and the math of selling abroad?
International shipping and duties can add 40-70% on top of your product cost, so the price a customer pays (the 'landed cost') is what makes or breaks the model, not your India MRP. Before you list, model landed cost end-to-end: product + cross-border freight + destination duty (driven by your HS code) + local VAT/sales tax, and decide whether you show duties at checkout or absorb them. Watch de minimis thresholds (the value below which a country waives duty) and remember a heavy, low-priced product rarely survives the freight math, lightweight, high-margin SKUs travel best.
Go deeper
4 resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked.
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Pricing for a market only makes sense once you know the landed cost, this free calculator estimates product plus duty plus tax plus shipping by destination and HS code before you set a price.
The native way to set genuinely market-specific pricing and currency per country from a single Shopify backend, instead of a flat FX-converted price that ignores local duty and competition.
The India-based way to ship cross-border with customs paperwork handled for you, relevant here because it bundles compliant export documentation with the actual shipment, reducing what you have to file yourself.
Goes a level deeper into the mechanics that trip brands up, customs, duties, multi-currency, and how Managed Markets can handle duties/taxes at checkout automatically.
