Guys
there seems to be some misonception about TR. Let me see if I can clear a few things up -
You can get used personal items under TR. The limit at least 3 years back was about 1.5 L (for a family of two). I am not sure if it was exactly Rs 1.5L but roundabout at that amount. You can use it once in a few years (dont remember if its once in 4 yrs or 3 yrs) but you have to be outside for that period of 1 or 2 years. Now for the duty structure,
electronic/electrical items are chargeable at 15 to 20% of the current value
The trick is how to determine used value - if you can have bills and say you can prove that the item is say 5 yrs old, then depreciation applies and you can list the present value of an item is quite low (say if you bought it for $100, you can say the present value is $25 as an example). However, in my experience and others that I know the value charged was quite low (10%). This also depends on the agent that you have and how he is managing everything
Also, the customs officer is allowed to determine what is "reasonable" as personal use and what isnt. They will not bother about a 2-in-1 or a DVD player or CD player if its a mass brand. Lets say you get a $10K player and it looks new, then they are going to charge you for it. An officer might now consider a high end item as reasonable for personal use....yes this is true. If you multiple items of the same type, then again this becomes harder to justify as personal use. There is also a HT classification (wherein the duty is lower) than 2-channel stereo - find it funny, but its true. So instead of declaring a DVD, receiver/6 ch amp, speakers, etc as separate items, just declare Home theater system with DVD, receiver and speakers in one item
The experiences in Bangalore at least has been pretty good (mine and others that I know), but this was three years back. I had some pretty expensive stuff with me
There was no electronic database 3 years ago for use with customs. They do have one now and just about any major brand that you can think of is in that database, if they punch it in, they get the value of it, so pls have bills just in case. Here again there is no one type of experience, I know friends of mine who brought back a whole container of household stuff and didnt have a single item checked/inspected. The customs officer just took the listed item of goods and value on what was submitted. I have also heard of experiences where they have opened and gone through every single box and checked the value against the databse, so its a toss up and depends on your Karma
Finally, one cant use TR and then take a one-way ticket and leave the country, not so simple - if you try and do this, the customs/immigration guy can ask you to produce the last and current years tax filing and will also force you to pay the TR value listed in your passport for full duty (42%). If I interpret what someone mentioned a couple of posts back, they cant bring stuff back and leave within a year with a one-way ticket and still avail of TR. Pls check with someone more knowledgabe. As I mentioned all of this was true when I went through it 3 years ago, things can be a little different now although I dont think there will be radical differences.
I can also recommend worldwide4shipping if you are moving from EU or US, excellent service though slightly on the higher side, but well worth it.
Oh, one more thing - When you use shippers, you will declare a certain value for insurance/damage/loss purposes, some shippers will use this as the value to declare at customs, some others use two different invoices (one for insurance and one for customs). Be sure to do your homework
Hope this helps
cheers
