Export 📅 October 4, 2026 ⏱ 12 min read

Landed Cost of an Indian-Made RFID Reader in the United States, Worked Line by Line

Line-by-line landed cost build-up for an Indian-made UHF RFID reader imported into the United States, showing customs duty at Free, the Merchandise Processing Fee on a $19,700 entered value, and the vessel-only Harbor Maintenance Fee

A United States buyer pricing an Indian-made UHF RFID reader against a domestic or Chinese quote usually starts at a tariff calculator, and the calculator returns the headline: products of India carry an additional 10 per cent. The reader’s own answer sits four lines deeper in the schedule, in an exception list that names its subheading by number.

This page works the whole figure — duty, Merchandise Processing Fee, Harbor Maintenance Fee, customs value and who pays under each Incoterm — with every rate traced to its source document. We ship this hardware from New Delhi, so the arithmetic below is what we put in front of US buyers.

The headline number: 0.35 per cent in federal charges

Take a real shipment shape: ten fixed UHF readers with antennas and cables, ex-works New Delhi, flown into Chicago. The commercial invoice totals $20,970 and the entered value is $19,700; the valuation section below builds that figure line by line, and the same shipment carries through the whole page. Here is every federal charge the entry pays.

Charge	Basis	By air	By ocean
Customs duty	HTSUS Column 1 General, 8471.60.90 or 8517.62.00 — Free	$0.00	$0.00
Section 301 duty, products of India	Priced at the plain subheading rate under heading 9903.05.86	$0.00	$0.00
Merchandise Processing Fee	0.3464% × $19,700	$68.24	$68.24
Harbor Maintenance Fee	0.125% × $19,700, commercial vessel	$0.00	$24.63
Total federal charges		$68.24 0.3464% of entered value	$92.87 0.4714% of entered value

That is the entire federal bill. Freight, insurance and brokerage sit alongside it as commercial lines, priced by the people who perform them. On an air shipment the United States collects about one third of one per cent of the entered value.

One reason this page carries a date: the tariff stack on Indian goods moved several times during 2026, so check the date on whatever page you are reading. This one was checked 3 October 2026 against HTSUS Revision 20 (2026).

The exemption chain that keeps an RFID reader at Free

Articles listed in U.S. note 52(b) pay their plain subheading rate, and both reader subheadings are on that list. The chain runs four steps, each quotable from HTSUS Revision 20 (2026).

Heading 9903.05.44 imposes the India duty and opens with its own carve-out: “Except for products described in headings 9903.05.85–9903.05.92, articles the product of India, as provided for in U.S. note 52 to this subchapter”. The rate column reads “The duty provided in the applicable subheading + 10%”.
Heading 9903.05.86 sits inside that excepted range. It covers “Articles provided for in subdivision (b) of U.S. note 52 to this subchapter”, and its rate column reads simply “The duty provided in the applicable subheading”.
U.S. note 52(b) states: “As provided in heading 9903.05.86, the duties imposed by headings 9903.05.20–9903.05.84 shall not apply to articles that are classifiable in the following provisions of the HTSUS”. The list that follows runs to several hundred provisions and contains 8471.60.90 and 8517.62.00.
Column 1 General for both subheadings is Free. Column 2, which reaches a short list of economies, stands at 35% for each.

Free plus nothing is free — the whole argument, checkable against the published schedule in about ten minutes. The step that turns it into money on your entry is the filing, and that has its own section further down.

Both subheadings land at Free, and the one line where the fork costs money

A UHF RFID reader classifies in 8471.60.90 when it works as a peripheral to a host computer and in 8517.62.00 when it moves data over its own network link. CBP ruled on RFID readers five times between 2007 and 2015, reaching 8471.60.9050 three times and the 8517.62.00 line twice, and landing at Free in every one. Both subheadings are Free at Column 1 General and both sit inside note 52(b), so the fork changes the box your broker ticks and not your cost. The reasoning, the rulings and the statistical suffixes are unpacked in our RFID reader HS code guide.

One line where the fork does cost money. Antennas shipped on their own classify as aerials in 8517.71.00, which is Free at Column 1 General. Note 52(b) lists 8517.13.00 and 8517.62.00 from heading 8517, and not 8517.71.00, so a standalone $1,400 antenna consignment prices at the subheading rate plus 10 per cent — $140, where the same antennas shipping as part of a reader system travel on the reader’s subheading and its note 52(b) entry. If you are buying spares, structure the shipment before the purchase order is cut.

Six dates in 2026 behind today’s rate

The India line moved several times during 2026. These six dates produced the position above, and a page written between any two of them describes an earlier one.

Date	What changed	Primary citation
6 February 2026	Executive Order 14384 terminates the additional 25% duty on products of India imposed by EO 14329 of 6 August 2025, effective 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on 7 February 2026.	EO 14384, 91 FR 6501 (11 February 2026)
20 February 2026	The Supreme Court decides Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections 6–3 against the IEEPA tariffs.	CRS Legal Sidebar LSB11398 (23 February 2026)
22 February 2026	CBP issues filing guidance: IEEPA duties “will no longer be collected for goods entered for consumption or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:00 a.m. eastern time on February 24, 2026”, and “all Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) numbers applicable to the IEEPA tariffs will be inactive in ACE as of February 24, 2026”.	CBP CSMS #67834313 (22 February 2026)
24 February – 24 July 2026	Proclamation 11012 imposes, under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, “for a period of 150 days, a temporary import surcharge of 10 percent ad valorem … effective February 24, 2026”. The statute caps the period at “150 days (unless such period is extended by Act of Congress)”, which closes the window on 24 July 2026.	Proclamation 11012 of 20 February 2026, 91 FR 9339 (25 February 2026); 19 U.S.C. 2132(a)
24 July 2026	Section 301 forced-labor duties take effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern time. Products of India are assessed at 10% under heading 9903.05.44, USTR having placed India in the 10% tier as an economy that imposes a forced labor import prohibition, with 12.5% applying to economies in the higher tier.	91 FR 47318 (28 July 2026); USTR action announcement, 23 July 2026; CBP CSMS #69326983
1 October 2026	FY2027 customs user fee limits take effect.	91 FR 48398, CBP Dec. 26–14 (31 July 2026)

The two halves of the year meet on 24 July: the Section 122 surcharge reached its statutory 150-day limit on the same day the Section 301 forced-labor action began. The net position today is simple enough to hold in your head. Most Indian goods pay their Column 1 General rate plus 10 per cent, while goods inside note 52(b) — the reader subheadings among them — pay their Column 1 General rate and stop there.

Merchandise Processing Fee: the FY2027 numbers and where they bind

MPF is the fee most quotes leave out and the one that behaves least intuitively, because it is an ad valorem rate squeezed between a floor and a ceiling. The FY2027 figures come from 91 FR 48398, CBP Dec. 26–14, published 31 July 2026 and “required as of October 1, 2026”:

Ad valorem rate: 0.3464%, held at its 2017 level. The notice footnotes it twice: “Only the limitation is increasing; the ad valorem rate of 0.3464 percent remains the same.”
Minimum per entry: $34.58
Maximum per entry: $670.86

The breakpoints follow from dividing each limit by the rate:

Floor binds below $34.58 ÷ 0.003464 = $9,982.68 of entered value
Ceiling binds above $670.86 ÷ 0.003464 = $193,666.28 of entered value

Between those figures you pay a flat 0.3464%. Beyond them your effective rate moves, and a small sample shipment is proportionally expensive:

Entered value	0.3464% of value	Bound applied	MPF payable	Effective rate
$5,000	$17.32	Floor	$34.58	0.6916%
$19,700	$68.24	Ad valorem	$68.24	0.3464%
$250,000	$866.00	Ceiling	$670.86	0.2683%

A $5,000 pilot order therefore carries twice the fee rate of the production order above, and consolidating two $100,000 shipments into one $200,000 entry saves $21.94 by clearing the ceiling: $346.40 twice over against a single capped $670.86.

A note for anyone reconciling the notice itself. It gives the inflation adjustment factor as 38.322 per cent as variable (H), and again in its operative sentence — the FY2027 fees are “as adjusted by 38.322 percent”. That factor reproduces every published figure from the statutory base amounts: $25.00 × 1.38322 = $34.58, $485.00 × 1.38322 = $670.86, and $138.00 × 1.38322 = $190.88 for the broker permit fee. A 38.222 reading appears once, earlier in the same determination. Footnote 1 records that CBP’s “calculations for the adjusted fees and limitations were made using unrounded figures”, so the published dollar limits are the operative numbers to budget from. The cycle resets every 1 October.

Harbor Maintenance Fee is a vessel charge

19 CFR 24.24(a) sets the trigger outright: “Commercial cargo loaded on or unloaded from a commercial vessel is subject to a port use fee of 0.125 percent (.00125) of its value if the loading or unloading occurs at a port within the definition of this section”.

Two consequences follow. HMF is a straight 0.125 per cent of value at every entry size, so the floor-and-ceiling structure belongs to MPF alone. And the trigger is a commercial vessel at a listed port, so air shipments carry MPF alone.

For RFID hardware that matters. A fixed reader is high in value and low in weight — the ten-unit shipment on this page is one palletised carton — so air is usually the sensible term, and the HMF line stays with the ocean option along with several weeks of transit. On the $19,700 shipment the ocean figure is $24.63 (0.125 per cent gives $24.625, rounded to the cent). On a $250,000 ocean order HMF adds $312.50 on top of the $670.86 MPF ceiling.

What enters customs value: unbundling a CIF or DDP invoice

MPF and HMF are percentages of entered value, so what goes into that value is worth getting right. 19 CFR 152.102(f) defines the price actually paid or payable as the total payment “exclusive of any charges, costs, or expenses incurred for transportation, insurance, and related services incident to the international shipment of the merchandise from the country of exportation to the place of importation in the United States”.

The CFR works its own example, at 19 CFR 152.103(a), Example 4. Company X pays $2,000 to Y Toy Factory, comprising $1,850 for toys and $150 for ocean freight and insurance; Y would have charged $2,200 but offset a $350 debt it owed X. Transaction value is $2,200 — the $1,850 plus the $350 indirect payment — while the $150 of freight and insurance is excluded. Two lessons in one case: international carriage comes out, and money that never appears on the invoice can still go in.

Here is the ten-reader shipment this page has been costing all along, quoted ex-works New Delhi, with carriage arranged by the buyer:

Invoice line	Amount	In customs value?	Authority
Fixed readers, 10 × $1,800	$18,000	Yes	Price actually paid or payable
Antennas and cables	$1,400	Yes	Price actually paid or payable
Export packing	$300	Yes	Part of the price
Foreign inland freight, factory to Delhi airport	$250	Excluded where separately identified	19 CFR 152.103(a)(5)
International air freight	$900	Excluded	19 CFR 152.102(f)
Insurance	$120	Excluded	19 CFR 152.102(f)
Invoice total	$20,970
Entered value	$19,700

MPF on $19,700 is $68.24; on the whole $20,970 invoice it is $72.64 — $4.40 more for the same goods. The amount is small and the habit is valuable, because the same arithmetic on a duty-bearing line multiplies by the duty rate rather than by 0.3464 per cent. It also means a CIF or DDP quote from India becomes comparable to an EXW quote once carriage is stripped out of both. Ask for freight and insurance to be itemised; 19 CFR 152.103(a)(5)(i) covers the inland leg, since where an ex-factory price already excludes foreign inland freight those charges stay out of the dutiable value.

Incoterms 2020: who pays, and the bond that sets your floor

The ICC’s Incoterms 2020 set has eleven rules. Seven work for any mode of transport — EXW, FCA, CPT, CIP, DAP, DPU and DDP — and four are built for sea and inland waterway carriage: FAS, FOB, CFR and CIF. That second group is where paperwork gets interesting, because FOB and CIF are habitually written on air shipments. For air freight from Delhi the matching terms are FCA, CPT or CIP.

Cost	EXW	FOB	CIF	DDP
Origin haulage and export clearance	Buyer	Seller	Seller	Seller
International freight	Buyer	Buyer	Seller	Seller
Insurance	Buyer	Buyer	Seller	Seller
US import duty	Buyer	Buyer	Buyer	Seller
MPF	Buyer	Buyer	Buyer	Seller
HMF (vessel)	Buyer	Buyer	Buyer	Seller
US customs brokerage	Buyer	Buyer	Buyer	Seller
Importer of record	Buyer	Buyer	Buyer	Seller

Read the bottom row before asking for DDP. It places import clearance on the seller, who then stands as importer of record in the United States, with a bond, a filer and liability for the entry. On DDP we quote the delivered figure with clearance arranged. For most buyers, CIP to a named US airport with their own broker on the entry costs less and keeps the classification control described above.

Then the line nearly every landed-cost page leaves out: the customs bond. CBP’s public guide puts it plainly: “The minimum Activity Code 1 continuous bond amount is $50,000 or 10% of the total estimated duties, taxes, and fees in the previous 12-month period, whichever is greater”, and “All continuous bonds are set in increments of $10,000 up to $100,000 and then in increments of $100,000 for larger bonds.” A one-off import can run on a single transaction bond instead.

The arithmetic favours you. Import $500,000 of readers a year across eight air entries and your federal charges come to about $1,732 of MPF with duty at Free: $62,500 of entered value per entry at 0.3464 per cent is $216.50, eight times over. Ten per cent of $1,732 is $173, so the percentage test stays far below the floor and you sit at the $50,000 minimum — the smallest continuous bond CBP issues. Goods that land at Free produce the cheapest bond position available.

Where the claim is made on the entry, and what the invoice should carry

The note 52(b) treatment is claimed on the entry rather than applied by default, and that single operational fact decides whether the arithmetic above is what you actually pay. CBP’s filing guidance for the Section 301 forced-labor action, CSMS #69326983 of 23 July 2026, sets the reporting order: Chapter 98 provisions first, then Chapter 99, then trade remedy provisions, then the Chapter 1–97 classification. For a reader shipment that means the entry summary carries 9903.05.86 ahead of 8471.60.9050 or 8517.62.0090. With the Chapter 99 line on the entry, the system prices the goods at the plain subheading rate; added afterwards, the same claim travels as a post-summary correction or a protest. Give your broker the heading number before the first entry and the question settles itself.

Four documents do most of the remaining work, and we send them with the shipment:

A commercial invoice and packing list itemised so that foreign inland freight, international air freight and insurance each sit on their own line and strip out cleanly for the entered value — the $19,700 against $20,970 distinction worked above.
The country-of-origin declaration supporting the India origin that heading 9903.05.44 and note 52(b) both turn on.
The model-level technical file — block diagram, interfaces, power, and what the reader does with the data after the read. This is the material a classification opinion or a binding ruling request is built from, and it is the part that decides which side of the 8471.60 / 8517.62 fork a model sits on.
The FCC-band configuration record for 902–928 MHz operation, matched to the order, so the hardware that arrives is the hardware the specification describes.

We build the hardware and the software in-house in New Delhi, so the specification behind those documents comes from the people who designed the board — which is what makes a classification question or a ruling request straightforward to answer.

What your broker confirms before you budget

Four items are your broker’s to confirm and price, and they turn this page into your number.

Brokerage. A commercial fee set by your broker — hold a written quote before you budget. The official figure nearby is the FY2027 Customs Broker Permit User Fee of $190.88; the broker pays it annually for its own permit, so it sits in their overhead rather than on your entry.
Section 232 semiconductor duties. Heading 9903.79.01 assesses the applicable subheading duty plus 25% on semiconductor articles. U.S. note 39(b) scopes that to three enumerated provisions — 8471.50, 8471.80 and 8473.30 — and to a logic integrated circuit, or an article containing one, meeting stated total processing performance and DRAM bandwidth thresholds. An RFID reader classifies in 8471.60.90 or 8517.62.00, so it prices at its own subheading rate and the 25 per cent stays with the enumerated goods.
Section 321 de minimis for samples and spare parts. Section 321 has moved more than once, so confirm it with your broker on the day of entry — it is the fastest-moving line in this table.
A binding ruling. For a specific model this is the route to certainty, and the published RFID rulings show what a good submission looks like: a plain description of the components, how they connect, and what the data does after the read.

If you are costing a deployment, the application pages carry the hardware counts that drive invoice value: warehouse management, inventory management and asset management each list a typical reader-and-antenna build.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a tariff on RFID readers imported from India to the USA?

A UHF RFID reader lands at Free. It classifies in 8471.60.90 or 8517.62.00, and Column 1 General for both reads Free. Both subheadings also appear in U.S. note 52(b), so heading 9903.05.86 prices them at the plain subheading rate rather than at the additional 10 per cent that heading 9903.05.44 applies to products of India. What remains is the Merchandise Processing Fee at 0.3464 per cent (minimum $34.58, maximum $670.86) and, on ocean shipments, the Harbor Maintenance Fee at 0.125 per cent. On a $19,700 air shipment that is $68.24 in total. Verified 3 October 2026 against HTSUS Revision 20 (2026).

Does the 10 per cent India tariff apply to electronics like RFID readers?

It applies to most Indian goods, and it prices articles listed in U.S. note 52(b) at their plain subheading rate — a list that includes both reader subheadings. Heading 9903.05.44 itself begins “Except for products described in headings 9903.05.85–9903.05.92”, and 9903.05.86 covers everything in note 52(b) at “The duty provided in the applicable subheading”. The practical point is that the exception is claimed rather than automatic: your broker reports 9903.05.86 on the entry, so give them the heading number before the first shipment.

What HS code is a UHF RFID reader under in the United States?

Either 8471.60.9050 or 8517.62.0090 in the current schedule, depending on how the reader is used. CBP rulings have gone both ways: readers that work with a host computer reached 8471.60.9050, while readers that transmit data over their own network link reached the 8517.62.00 line. CBP’s 2015 rulings cite that line as 8517.62.0050, the statistical suffix in force at the time; HTSUS Revision 20 (2026) carries suffixes 10, 20 and 90 under 8517.62.00, so the current reporting number for a reader is 8517.62.0090. Both subheadings are Free at Column 1 General and both are in note 52(b), so the choice sets the reporting number rather than the cost. A binding ruling settles it for a specific model.

How much is the Merchandise Processing Fee in 2026-27?

For FY2027 the ad valorem rate is 0.3464 per cent, held at its 2017 level, with a minimum of $34.58 and a maximum of $670.86 per entry. These took effect on 1 October 2026 under 91 FR 48398, CBP Dec. 26–14, published 31 July 2026. The breakpoints matter more than the rate: the minimum binds below $9,982.68 of entered value ($34.58 ÷ 0.003464) and the maximum binds above $193,666.28 ($670.86 ÷ 0.003464). A $5,000 shipment therefore pays an effective 0.6916 per cent, while a $250,000 shipment pays 0.2683 per cent.

Do I pay the Harbor Maintenance Fee on an air shipment?

HMF is a vessel charge. 19 CFR 24.24(a) applies it to “commercial cargo loaded on or unloaded from a commercial vessel” at a qualifying port, so an air shipment carries MPF alone. Where HMF does apply it is a straight 0.125 per cent of value at every entry size, which is a different structure from MPF’s floor and ceiling. Because fixed readers are high in value and low in weight, air is often the sensible term anyway: on the $19,700 shipment worked on this page the ocean option carries $24.63 of HMF, and a $250,000 ocean order carries $312.50.

Is US customs duty calculated on FOB or CIF value?

The regulation governs, whatever label the invoice carries. 19 CFR 152.102(f) defines the price actually paid or payable as the total payment “exclusive of any charges, costs, or expenses incurred for transportation, insurance, and related services incident to the international shipment”. So international freight and insurance come out of customs value even on a CIF invoice. The CFR’s own Example 4 at 19 CFR 152.103(a) works it: of a $2,000 payment, $150 of ocean freight and insurance is excluded, while a $350 indirect payment is added, giving $2,200. Ask your supplier to itemise carriage so the entered value is clean.

Who is the importer of record on a DDP shipment from India?

The seller. Under DDP the seller handles import clearance and bears duty, MPF, HMF and brokerage, which means standing as importer of record in the United States with a customs bond, a filer and liability for the entry. On DDP we quote the delivered figure with clearance arranged. Many buyers prefer CIP to a named US airport, because it keeps their own broker on the entry and therefore keeps control of the classification and the 9903.05.86 claim that holds the shipment at Free.