Every gram of gold sold in India carries a border toll inside its price, and in 2026 that toll doubled overnight. The customs duty on gold India levies rose from 6% to 15% in May 2026, a sharp reversal of the 2024 cut, announced days after the Prime Minister publicly urged citizens to pause new gold buying to save foreign exchange. Since India mines almost nothing and imports nearly all its gold, that duty flows straight into every rate board in the country. This guide covers the current rate, how the stack of levies actually builds, a worked example, the separate rates air passengers face, and what the duty means for domestic prices, and for households whose existing gold, valued at those higher prices, can back a Gold Loan with a lender such as IIFL Finance.

The document list for buying gold is either empty or short, and which one depends on two questions: how much, and through what route. The documents required to buy gold at a jewellery counter begin at zero below ₹2 lakh and grow to exactly one identity proof above it, while app and paper routes ask for their KYC up front regardless of size. Sellers who demand more are applying policy; sellers who ask for less than the law requires are a warning in themselves. This guide sets out the requirements by value tier and by route, the cash rule that shapes payment, the paperwork worth collecting even when none is demanded, and the equally short list a Gold Loan needs at a lender such as IIFL Finance.

India never banned buying gold with cash. It made receiving too much of it ruinous, which achieved the same thing more elegantly. The gold purchase limit cash buyers run into is Section 269ST of the income tax law: no person may receive ₹2 lakh or more in cash in a single transaction, day or occasion, and the penalty, equal to the entire amount received, lands on the jeweller. So the counter enforces the ceiling for its own survival. This guide covers how the cap works in practice, the key scenarios, the PAN rule running alongside it, the higher anti-money-laundering threshold jewellers watch, and the question buyers of older, cash-bought gold ask most: can that gold still be pledged for a loan with a lender such as IIFL Finance? It can.

Legal and regulated are different words, and digital gold lives in the gap between them. So is digital gold legal in India? Yes, entirely: buying vaulted gold through an app is a lawful purchase of a commodity, and crores of accounts do it. What digital gold is not is supervised. No financial regulator oversees the product, a gap SEBI itself flagged publicly in November 2025, and the protections investors assume from words like "platform" and "vault" rest on private arrangements, not on law. This guide maps the actual rulebook: what SEBI and RBI each govern and pointedly do not, the purchase and compliance thresholds that do apply, the regulated alternatives, and the safety checklist, including the reminder that only physical gold, the kind a lender such as IIFL Finance accepts, carries the full weight of the RBI's frameworks.

Gold is the last big purchase in India that can still be made with empty pockets, no cards, no forms, provided it stays small. Scale up, or switch routes, and know-your-customer requirements arrive on a schedule worth learning in advance. The rules differ sharply by route: a jewellery counter asks for identity only above thresholds, while KYC for digital gold apps arrives at onboarding, and paper routes like bonds and ETFs demand the full file before the first rupee moves. This guide maps KYC across every gold route, the documents, the trigger points, the jeweller's own duties, and the separate KYC that applies when gold is pledged for a loan with a lender such as IIFL Finance.

Half the tax anxiety at a jewellery counter is about levies that do not exist. Start with the biggest myth: there is no TDS on gold purchase for an ordinary individual buyer, nothing withheld, nothing deducted, whatever the amount. What the buyer actually meets is a short, knowable list: GST on the metal and the making, a PAN requirement above ₹2 lakh, a hard ceiling on cash, and paperwork the jeweller files quietly in the background. This guide walks the real list in order, what applies, at what threshold, and what each rule wants from you, so a large purchase clears the counter without surprises, and the invoice it produces serves the gold for life, including on the day it is pledged with a lender such as IIFL Finance.

The traditional unit of “tola” remains widely used in gold transactions across India. One tola is equal to 11.6638 grams. The current value of 1 tola gold price varies based on prevailing market conditions, including the global bullion price and the INR–USD exchange rate.

The 8 grams gold price is commonly referenced in jewellery purchases and valuation. Since one gram pricing forms the basis, the value of 8 grams changes in line with prevailing market conditions, including global gold prices and exchange rate movements.

The Kasu gold rate reflects the value of gold calculated using a traditional South Indian unit of measurement. One kasu is generally equivalent to approximately 2.5 grams, and its value is derived from the prevailing per-gram gold rate.

The pavan gold rate represents the value of gold calculated using a traditional South Indian unit, where one pavan equals 8 grams of gold. Pricing for a pavan is derived from the prevailing per-gram gold rate and generally follows 22K purity, which is standard for jewellery in regional markets.