Wrong!
Indian Customs will charge you upto 40% for an electronic item. You'll have to pay customs for everything you buy and get shipped from a foreign land. When the courier co. gets the package to the border city (delhi, mumbai, etc.), they will call you for papers, value of the object, etc. and the Customs Dept. will charge you accordingly.
People can evade this only one way, if they can show they were in United States (or whatever other country you're getting the stuff from) for 6 or more months and forgot the stuff there. Also, the term *stuff* applies loosely to personal items like shaving kits, electronic razor, etc. and it has to be old n used, i.e. no tags, packaging. This would ofcourse require travel documents. One guy i know recently paid about 40% = Rs. 75,000 for some RFID stuff he bought from a Taiwan manufacturer. The courier co., UPS in this case, contacted him and he had to show receipts and pay customs to get the package delivered to him.
But yeah, if one is getting stuff along with him from a foreign country, he can evade the duty by declaring nothing and passing through the *green channel*. Still, declaring wrong value would be breaking the law so most people declare some value within 25K (that's the current limit,) and pass through the green channel even if they are carrying stuff worth in Lakhs.
Some, like one of my friends, get stopped. He paid about 25K as customs duty for a laptop he bought in US for 40K because the customs officer charged the duty based on the value given in a chart.
As for getting the stuff in US from India, yes, you need to pay customs again! Unless you can show the same proof mentioned above. I had to go through a lot of paper work and faxes to get the stuff my parents shipped via DHL last year. But i should point out that I didn't even get any call and got the package directly when they used First Flight (called AirBorne in US.)
As evident, there's a lot of hit and miss going on. And there might be loopholes i am not aware of. Hope that clears it up for you people.
Visit these sites for official info and see what you can figure out from all the mumbo jumbo:
http://www.cbec.gov.in/
http://www.geocities.com/indiancustoms/
Buying Stuff from Ebay.com - Regarding shipping and Customs?
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