Is an HSN code the same as an HTS code?

They share the first six digits — the international HS layer administered by the WCO — and then they diverge. The US HTS continues to eight and ten digits with its own legal notes, statistical suffixes and unit conventions: the current US schedule holds 23,193 active ten-digit lines spread over just 3,597 six-digit headings, roughly 6.4 US lines per HS heading. An Indian DGFT-registered HSN therefore identifies your product internationally but does not select the duty rate your buyer pays at the US border.

What duty rate applies to cotton T-shirts under HSN 6109 imported into the US?

Cotton knit T-shirts land on 6109.10.00, whose General rate is 16.5% — and all fourteen of its ten-digit statistical suffixes carry the same 16.5%, so the fiber branch, not the suffix, is what matters here. But the neighboring branches under the same six-digit heading range from 2.6% (at least 70% silk) through 5.6% (wool, long sleeves), 16% (other fibers) and 16.5% (cotton) up to 32% (man-made fibers). One HSN number, five possible US bills.

Why do suffixes under the same six-digit code pay different rates?

Because the US splits each HS heading by whatever attribute Congress wrote into the schedule — fiber content, sleeve length, value-per-dozen thresholds or mechanical features. Across the whole schedule, 1,314 of the 3,597 six-digit headings carry two or more distinct General rates, and 646 mix duty-free lines with taxed ones inside a single heading. The suffix digits themselves are statistical, but the eight-digit subheadings above them are legally binding rate boundaries.

Does India get preferential duty rates on apparel exports to the US?

Not through the Special column. Every line under 6109 grants Free entry to FTA partners such as AU, BH, CL, CO, IL, JO, KR, MA, OM, P, PA, PE, S and SG — Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Israel, Korea and others — but India appears on none of those lists, and GSP coverage ended for India in 2019. An Indian exporter pays the full General rate, which makes picking the right fiber branch even more consequential than for an FTA-origin competitor.

How do I find the exact ten-digit HTS code for my product before quoting a price?

Take your six-digit HSN as the starting point, then resolve three questions the US schedule asks beyond it: fiber percentages (for textiles), the unit of measure (US lines often demand dozens-plus-kilograms, not pieces), and any value thresholds written into eight-digit subheadings. Then run the resulting ten-digit line — not your HSN — through a duty calculator together with origin and entry fees. Our guide to statistical suffixes walks the digit structure line by line.

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HSN vs HTS: One T-Shirt Code, Five US Duty Rates From 2.6% to 32%

Your buyer in New Jersey asks for “the HS code” and you quote HSN 6109 with confidence. The US Customs officer will ask a question your HSN certificate never mentions: how much of the shirt, by weight, is polyester? The answer moves the duty bill from 2.6% to 32% — a twelve-fold swing inside a single six-digit heading. Every figure below is recomputed from the raw USITC schedule export (23,193 administrative lines, generated October 9, 2026).

The six digits you have are where the US schedule starts

HSN and HTS agree on purpose for exactly six digits. That is the Harmonized System layer maintained by the World Customs Organization, and it is genuinely international: an Indian DGFT registration, a Pakistani customs ruling and a Vietnamese certificate of origin all speak the same first-six language. Everything after digit six belongs to the importing country. The United States extends each heading into eight-digit subheadings that carry legal rate boundaries and ten-digit statistical suffixes that carry reporting obligations — and the multiplication is dramatic. The current US schedule contains 23,193 active ten-digit lines sitting on top of just 3,597 six-digit headings: roughly 6.4 American lines for every internationally agreed heading, with 11,414 distinct eight-digit codes in between.

This is not trivia. It is the structural reason a forwarded HSN certificate cannot answer your buyer's real question, which is always a landed-cost question. When the six-digit level splinters into a dozen national interpretations, someone has to make the interpretive leap — and if neither you nor your buyer does it deliberately, US Customs will do it for you at the port, retroactively, with interest.

One T-shirt heading, five duty rates

Heading 6109 — T-shirts, singlets and other knitted vests — is the single most-exported apparel category out of Tirupur, India's knitwear cluster. In the US schedule it resolves to 40 ten-digit lines carrying five distinct General rates, partitioned almost entirely by fiber content:

US line	Fiber test (from the schedule text)	General rate	Column 2
6109.10.00	Of cotton	16.5%	90%
6109.90.10	Of man-made fibers	32%	90%
6109.90.15	Of wool, with long sleeves	5.6%	55.5%
6109.90.40	Containing 70% or more by weight of silk or silk waste	2.6%	90%
6109.90.80	Other (blends, linen, unknown-content knits)	16%	90%

Read the man-made-fiber row twice: the cheapest common fiber attracts the highest rate. A polyester knit pays 32% while the identical silhouette in cotton pays 16.5% and the same shirt in silk pays 2.6%. Nothing in the Indian HSN system forces that choice to be made — HSN 6109 10 90 and HSN 6109 90 90 look like siblings and behave like different products. And note what the schedule demands in exchange for precision: the unit column for every one of these lines reads “doz.; kg”, meaning US entries declare both dozens and kilograms. Your invoice in pieces does not survive the translation untouched.

The same carton, four possible bills

Take a shipment worth $50,000 of knitted T-shirts, classified correctly or lazily:

If it clears as…	Fiber assumption	Duty on $50K shipment	vs. correct cotton bill
6109.10.00 (cotton)	cotton	$8,250.00	—
6109.90.80 (other)	blend, unspecified	$8,000.00	−$250.00
6109.90.40 (silk-rich)	≥70% silk	$1,300.00	−$6,950.00
6109.90.10 (man-made)	polyester	$16,000.00	+$7,750.00

A $7,750 swing on one container — for the same shirt shape — decided purely by a fiber-weight percentage nobody wrote on the HSN certificate. This is also why classification disputes dominate the CBP rulings corpus: when the attribute deciding the rate lives inside the fabric, laboratories, not lawyers, settle arguments.

India's preference gap makes the branch choice final

Every line under 6109 carries a Special column beginning with Free for a list of partners: AU, BH, CL, CO, IL, JO, KR, MA, OM, P, PA, PE, S, SG — Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Morocco, Oman, Peru, Panama, Singapore and their companions. India is on none of these lists. The Generalized System of Preferences that once cushioned some Indian goods was terminated for India in 2019 and remains unrenewed, and there is no US–India free trade agreement to fall back on. For an Indian exporter this has a sharp practical consequence: whatever General rate the fiber branch dictates is the rate you pay, full stop. A Korean competitor shipping the same polyester knit can engineer around 32% with a certificate of origin; you cannot. Margin planning therefore has to treat the branch decision as the whole game — and treat any quote built on the wrong branch as a liability waiting to surface in your buyer's landed-cost reconciliation.

Column 2 deserves one clarifying sentence because it shows up on every lookup screenshot: the 90% Column 2 rates apply only to non-normal-trade-relations countries — currently Belarus, Cuba, North Korea and Russia under General Note 3(b) — up to 90% across this family, though the wool branch sits at 55.5%. India sits comfortably under normal relations, so ignore the Column 2 column entirely unless geopolitics moves.

How wide is the gap? Schedule-wide, it is the rule, not the exception

It would be comfortable to file 6109 under “textile weirdness.” The numbers say otherwise: 1,314 of the 3,597 six-digit headings in the US schedule carry two or more distinct General rates, and 646 headings mix duty-free and taxed lines within the same six digits. Over a third of the schedule is a fiber-test, feature-test or threshold-test away from a different bill. The rate structure you inherit from HSN is a coin-flip distribution until someone resolves the national digits — and the person best positioned to resolve them is the one holding the factory floor data: you.

Three steps from HSN to a defensible US line

First, keep the six digits and add the chapter context: pull the US chapter page for your sector (for knitted apparel that is chapter 61) and scan how the schedule partitions your heading — by fiber, by feature, by value. Second, resolve the attributes the US text actually tests. For 6109 that means a fiber-weight breakdown good enough to defend at a laboratory dispute; for machinery it might mean bore diameter, for watches it is movement type. Third, pin the ten-digit line and re-run your quote against it, including the doz.-plus-kg unit declaration and the entry fees that ride on formal entries. Then pressure-test the result in the tariff calculator with origin selected, because the rate line is only half of the landed cost — merchandise processing fees and any Chapter 99 stacks ride on top, as our explainer on US tariff duty rate types details.

Two habits keep the translation honest year after year. Re-verify whenever the schedule refreshes, because suffix trees grow and shrink without announcement — our statistical suffixes guide explains the digit anatomy in depth. And when a buyer's broker quotes a rate that disagrees with yours, compare ten-digit lines rather than six-digit headings: most disagreements dissolve the moment both parties realize they were reading different branches of the same heading. If a rate line changes under a product you ship monthly, you want to know the week it happens — that is precisely the kind of event our monitoring alerts are built around.

Frequently asked questions

Is an HSN code the same as an HTS code?: They share the first six digits — the international HS layer administered by the WCO — and then they diverge. The US HTS continues to eight and ten digits with its own legal notes, statistical suffixes and unit conventions: the current US schedule holds 23,193 active ten-digit lines spread over just 3,597 six-digit headings, roughly 6.4 US lines per HS heading. An Indian DGFT-registered HSN therefore identifies your product internationally but does not select the duty rate your buyer pays at the US border.
What duty rate applies to cotton T-shirts under HSN 6109 imported into the US?: Cotton knit T-shirts land on 6109.10.00, whose General rate is 16.5% — and all fourteen of its ten-digit statistical suffixes carry the same 16.5%, so the fiber branch, not the suffix, is what matters here. But the neighboring branches under the same six-digit heading range from 2.6% (at least 70% silk) through 5.6% (wool, long sleeves), 16% (other fibers) and 16.5% (cotton) up to 32% (man-made fibers). One HSN number, five possible US bills.
Why do suffixes under the same six-digit code pay different rates?: Because the US splits each HS heading by whatever attribute Congress wrote into the schedule — fiber content, sleeve length, value-per-dozen thresholds or mechanical features. Across the whole schedule, 1,314 of the 3,597 six-digit headings carry two or more distinct General rates, and 646 mix duty-free lines with taxed ones inside a single heading. The suffix digits themselves are statistical, but the eight-digit subheadings above them are legally binding rate boundaries.
Does India get preferential duty rates on apparel exports to the US?: Not through the Special column. Every line under 6109 grants Free entry to FTA partners such as AU, BH, CL, CO, IL, JO, KR, MA, OM, P, PA, PE, S and SG — Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Israel, Korea and others — but India appears on none of those lists, and GSP coverage ended for India in 2019. An Indian exporter pays the full General rate, which makes picking the right fiber branch even more consequential than for an FTA-origin competitor.
How do I find the exact ten-digit HTS code for my product before quoting a price?: Take your six-digit HSN as the starting point, then resolve three questions the US schedule asks beyond it: fiber percentages (for textiles), the unit of measure (US lines often demand dozens-plus-kilograms, not pieces), and any value thresholds written into eight-digit subheadings. Then run the resulting ten-digit line — not your HSN — through a duty calculator together with origin and entry fees. Our guide to statistical suffixes walks the digit structure line by line.

Measurement trail

All counts recomputed 2026-10-18 from data/hts.json (USITC HTS REST export, generated 2026-10-09T17:43:36Z): 23,193 ten-digit rows; 3,597 unique six-digit prefixes; 11,414 unique eight-digit codes; 6109 family = 40 ten-digit lines with General rates {2.6%, 5.6%, 16%, 16.5%, 32%}; 6109.10.00 has a parent line plus 14 statistical suffixes, all uniformly at 16.5%; rate-form census {free 8,504, ad-valorem-only 12,110, specific-only 1,690, compound 595, other-text 294}; 1,314 multi-rate and 646 Free-mixing six-digit families. Special-column partner strings quoted verbatim from 6109.10.00.04. Worked-example arithmetic is deterministic (50,000 × rate) and enforced by the generator's data gate at build time.