A watch with a precious metal case and a movement of over 17 jewels enters the United States free of duty. The identical movement in a base metal case pays $1.53 a watch, plus 4.2 percent on the case and 9.8 percent on the bracelet. Both lines were read from the tariff schedule on 30 August 2026. The gold watch is the one that pays nothing.
How this was read, and what the duty is charged on
Every rate below comes from chapter 91 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, published by the United States International Trade Commission and served as machine-readable JSON without a key. Rich & Richer pulled headings 9101 and 9102 on 30 August 2026, which between them cover every wrist watch entering the country: 9101 is watches with a case of precious metal or metal clad with precious metal, and 9102 is everything else. The pull returned 123 lines of which 65 carry a rate.
Duty is charged on the customs value, which is broadly what the importer paid for the watch rather than what it sells for in a shop, so none of these percentages should be read against a retail price. One more thing decides where a watch lands: the schedule nests four levels deep and most of its lines are described only as “Other”, so a rate means nothing without the headings above it. Every label in the tables below is derived from that ancestry rather than from the line’s own wording, and the build fails if a line moves.
The duty on a watch is not a percentage
Almost every consumer good carries a single ad valorem rate. A wrist watch does not. It carries a fixed number of cents or dollars for each watch, then separate percentages charged on the case and on the strap or bracelet, each assessed against that part alone rather than against the whole watch. Quartz lines add a fourth charge on the battery. A steel automatic on a leather strap is $1.53 plus 4.2 percent plus 2 percent, and those two percentages never touch the same dollar.
That construction has a consequence worth stating precisely. Because the percentages apply to portions that do not overlap, the whole ad valorem charge cannot exceed the largest single rate on the line, whatever the importer’s value split turns out to be. On a steel automatic with a metal bracelet that ceiling is 9.8 percent of the customs value. That is a bound rather than an estimate, and it is the strongest statement available without the value split, which no manufacturer publishes.
Mechanical watches: the gold ones enter free
| What it is | Tariff line | General rate | Most the percentages can reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Precious metal case, automatic winding over 17 jewels | 9101.21.50 | Free | None |
| Precious metal case, hand-wound over 17 jewels | 9101.29.90 | Free | None |
| Precious metal case, automatic winding 17 jewels or fewer | 9101.21.80 | $1.61 each + 4.4% on the case and strap, band or bracelet | 4.4% |
| Base metal case on a metal bracelet, automatic over 17 jewels | 9102.21.70 | $1.53 each + 4.2% on the case + 9.8% on the strap, band or bracelet | 9.8% |
| Base metal case on a leather or other strap, automatic over 17 jewels | 9102.21.90 | $1.53 each + 4.2% on the case + 2% on the strap, band or bracelet | 4.2% |
Line 9101.21.50 covers a precious metal case with automatic winding and over 17 jewels, and its general rate is the word Free. Line 9101.29.90 does the same for a hand-wound movement. A bracelet entered with that gold watch is dutiable separately at 3.1% under line 9101.21.10.00, so the metal on the wrist is taxed and the watch it is attached to is not.
Quartz watches pay the highest percentages of all
| What it is | Tariff line | General rate | Most the percentages can reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base metal case on a metal bracelet, quartz | 9102.11.25 | 40¢ each + 8.5% on the case + 14% on the strap, band or bracelet + 5.3% on the battery | 14% |
| Base metal case on a leather or other strap, quartz | 9102.11.45 | 40¢ each + 8.5% on the case + 2.8% on the strap, band or bracelet + 5.3% on the battery | 8.5% |
| Bracelet entered with that gold watch | 9101.21.10.00 | 3.1% | None |
A base metal quartz watch on a metal bracelet pays 8.5 percent on its case and 14 percent on its bracelet, against 4.2 and 9.8 percent for the mechanical watch in the same metal. It also pays 5.3 percent on the battery. The cheapest category of watch in this chapter carries the heaviest percentages, and the dearest carries none.
The movement is the one part that is never taxed
Read the rated lines together and something is missing from all of them. Duty attaches to the case and to the strap or bracelet, with a battery charge on the quartz lines. It does not attach to the movement. The mechanism is the reason a mechanical watch costs what it does, it is the part the marketing is about, and the tariff schedule ignores it entirely except as a way of sorting watches into bands.
The bands themselves are the sorting mechanism, and they run on jewel count. Over 17 jewels is the top band, which is where the free rate lives in 9101 and the $1.53 rate lives in 9102. A gold automatic that falls short of 17 jewels pays $1.61 each + 4.4% on the case and strap, band or bracelet under line 9101.21.80 rather than entering free. Jewel count stopped being a useful measure of movement quality decades ago, and a modern automatic clears the top band comfortably at somewhere between 25 and 31 jewels, so in practice the distinction the schedule turns on is one almost every serious watch now passes without trying.
Switzerland has no US trade agreement, so Swiss watches pay the general column
The special column in these headings lists free-trade partners whose goods enter at a preferential rate. Rich & Richer tokenized the country codes on every line in both headings on 30 August 2026 rather than reading them by eye, and Switzerland appears in none of them. Swiss watches therefore pay the general column printed above, which is the column this whole article is about. It is worth saying plainly because most writing on watch pricing treats the tariff as a rounding error without ever naming a line.
What this does not cover
It covers the general duty rate in chapter 91 and nothing else. Trade measures imposed outside the tariff schedule sit on top of these rates and are not in this file, which records no additional duties against any of the 123 lines pulled. Classification is also a decision made at the border rather than by a reader: US Customs and Border Protection rules on which line a particular watch falls under, and a case described as gold-plated rather than precious metal moves between headings entirely. Nothing here is customs advice.
Nor does any of this tell a buyer what a watch costs. Duty is charged on the customs value at import, and the gap between that and a retail price is the whole of the distribution chain. For what these watches actually sell for this desk has measured the medians this desk measured across seven Swiss brands and what a Rolex costs measured in gold, and the standing reference for the rest of the cost is what a luxury watch costs to own.
This piece is part of our watches reference, What a Luxury Watch Costs to Own: Prices, Depth and the Conflict in Every Source, which sets out the method and collects every figure we have published on the subject. Also in it: A Median Breitling Asks $4,795. A Median Audemars Piguet Asks $39,245. Six Swiss Brands, Priced., What a Pre-Owned Rolex Costs, by Family: $7,595 to $40,495, The Best Rolex for Boating Is Not the Yacht-Master. It Asks $2,500 More for a Third of the Depth., Gold Fixed at $4,336 on 2026-08-07. The Record High Was $5,405, Six Months Ago., Five Swiss Watches Ask Under $10,000. The Cheapest Is a Third of a Submariner., A Rolex Submariner Costs 3.57 Ounces of Gold Today. A Daytona Costs 9.34..
Sources
Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (headings 9101 and 9102 of chapter 91), published by the United States International Trade Commission and read by Rich & Richer from the commission’s machine-readable export on 30 August 2026. The pull returned 123 lines of which 65 carry a rate. Every rate quoted above is the general column verbatim, including the word Free where the schedule uses it.
The labels attached to each line are derived from its ancestry in the schedule rather than from its own description, because most leaves in chapter 91 read only “Other”; the build refuses to publish if a quoted line moves out from under the heading it was labelled by. The ceiling column is Rich & Richer’s arithmetic on the published percentages. The finding that Switzerland receives no preference was established by tokenizing the special column across both headings on 30 August 2026, not by inspection.
Frequently asked questions
How much is import duty on a watch in the US?
It depends on the case metal rather than the price. A watch with a precious metal case and over 17 jewels enters free under line 9101.21.50, read on 30 August 2026. A base metal case with the same movement pays $1.53 for each watch plus 4.2 percent on the case and 9.8 percent on the bracelet. A base metal quartz watch pays 40 cents for the watch, then 8.5 percent on its case and 14 percent on its bracelet, with a further 5.3 percent charged on the battery.
Do you pay duty on a Rolex brought into the United States?
That depends on the case and on the jewel count, not on the brand. A gold-cased automatic with over 17 jewels falls in line 9101.21.50, whose general rate on 30 August 2026 was Free, while a steel automatic on a steel bracelet falls in line 9102.21.70 at $1.53 plus two percentages. Classification is decided by US Customs and Border Protection at the border rather than by the traveler, and personal exemptions and declaration rules are a separate matter this desk has not measured.
Why is the duty on a gold watch lower than on a steel one?
Because chapter 91 taxes the case, the strap and the battery, and it stopped taxing precious metal cased mechanical watches in the top jewel band altogether. Line 9101.21.50 reads Free while the base metal equivalent, line 9102.21.70, reads $1.53 each plus 4.2 percent on the case and 9.8 percent on the bracelet, both read on 30 August 2026. The schedule was built to protect a domestic watchmaking industry that no longer exists, and it sorts watches by jewel count instead of by value, so the outcome is a tariff that falls hardest on the cheapest watches and disappears entirely at the top of the market. This desk found the same shape in the boat sales tax caps, where four of five states cap the tax so the effective rate falls as the boat gets dearer, reached by a completely different mechanism.