How do duties, shipping and taxes change my pricing and the math of selling abroad?
The short answer
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.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
Why we picked it
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.
Why we picked it
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.
Why we picked it
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.
Why we picked it
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.
