How to register for GST

The general rule is a turnover threshold: cross it in a financial year and registration becomes compulsory. The threshold is different for suppliers of goods and suppliers of services, and lower in the states classed as special category. Those figures are set by notification and have been revised more than once, so the only safe source is the current CBIC notification rather than a number you remember.

Turnover for this purpose means aggregate turnover on the same PAN across all of India — taxable supplies, exempt supplies, exports and inter-state supplies to your own other registrations, computed on a pan-India basis and excluding the tax itself. Businesses often compute only their taxable sales in one state and conclude they are under the limit when they are not.

Separately, section 24 lists categories that must register regardless of turnover. These include persons liable to pay tax under reverse charge, non-resident taxable persons, casual taxable persons, agents supplying on behalf of others, persons required to deduct tax at source, input service distributors, and those supplying through an electronic commerce operator required to collect tax at source. If you sell through a marketplace, this is the clause that catches you.

Inter-state supply is the provision most often misunderstood. Supplying goods across state lines triggers compulsory registration; suppliers of services across state lines have been given an exemption up to the threshold by notification. The two are not treated identically and the exemption sits in a notification rather than the Act, which is exactly why people get it wrong.

Voluntary registration is allowed and is sometimes the right call — most obviously when your customers are themselves registered and want input tax credit, or when you buy substantially and want to claim credit on your inputs. It is the wrong call when your customers are consumers, because you then add tax to a price your competitor does not.

Agriculturists supplying their own produce and persons supplying only goods or services that are wholly exempt or not liable to tax are outside the requirement altogether.

Get the documents together first. You need PAN for the business and for each promoter or partner, Aadhaar for the authorised signatory, proof of constitution such as a partnership deed or certificate of incorporation, proof of the principal place of business, a bank account in the name of the business, and photographs.

Proof of place of business is where applications most often stall. An owned premises needs a property tax receipt, electricity bill or municipal record; a rented premises needs the rent agreement together with the owner's ownership proof and, in many cases, a no-objection letter. A consent letter is used for premises provided by a relative or another business. Mismatched names between the electricity bill and the rent agreement generate a query almost every time.

Open Part A of the registration application on the GST portal with your PAN, mobile number and email. Both the mobile and the email are verified by OTP, and you receive a Temporary Reference Number that is valid for a limited period. Note it down — losing it means starting again.

Complete Part B with business details, promoter and authorised signatory details, the principal and any additional places of business, the goods and services you supply with their HSN or SAC codes, bank account details and the state jurisdiction. Get the HSN and SAC codes right: they determine your rate, and correcting them later is an amendment rather than an edit.

Authenticate with Aadhaar. Aadhaar authentication for the promoter and authorised signatory is the fast path; declining it, or failing it, routes the application to physical verification of the premises by an officer, which adds substantially to the timeline.

Submit with a digital signature certificate where the constitution requires one — companies and limited liability partnerships must use a DSC — or with an electronic verification code otherwise.

Track the application. The officer may raise a notice seeking clarification, and there is a deadline to respond; an unanswered notice results in rejection and you start over. On approval you receive the GSTIN and can download the registration certificate in Form REG-06 from the portal.

The composition scheme exists for small taxpayers who would rather pay a flat percentage of turnover than run full input-credit accounting. A separate composition option was later introduced for service providers and mixed suppliers below a lower turnout limit, which was the change that brought small service businesses into scope at all.

The decisive question is who your customers are. If you sell to registered businesses, composition makes you structurally more expensive than a regular-registered competitor, because your customer cannot claim credit on what they buy from you. If you sell to consumers, that objection disappears entirely and composition is often simply cheaper to run.

Composition dealers cannot make inter-state outward supplies, cannot supply through an e-commerce operator required to collect tax at source, and cannot collect tax from customers or issue tax invoices. You issue a bill of supply and display that you are a composition taxable person.

Coming out of composition is not automatic. If you cross the limit you must withdraw and move to regular registration, and continuing to pay at composition rates after crossing the limit is a straightforward assessment risk.

Rates and turnover limits under both routes are set by the GST Council and given effect by notification. They have been revised repeatedly, including significant restructuring at recent Council meetings, so treat any figure you find in a blog as historic.

From the date of registration you have a continuous filing obligation. Outward supply details and a summary return are filed on the applicable cycle — monthly or quarterly depending on turnover and the scheme you opt into — and an annual return follows. Nil returns are still returns.

Late fees accrue per return per day of delay, subject to caps, and interest runs on tax paid late. The portal will not let you file a later period until earlier periods are filed, so a single missed return blocks everything behind it and the fees compound in sequence rather than in parallel.

Your invoices must carry the prescribed particulars: your GSTIN, a consecutive serial number, the customer's GSTIN where registered, the place of supply, the HSN or SAC code, taxable value and the tax split into central, state or integrated components. Getting the place of supply wrong is what turns an intra-state supply into an inter-state one and produces a mismatch that surfaces months later.

Input tax credit is the reason most B2B businesses register at all, and it is conditional. You need a valid tax invoice, you must have received the goods or services, the tax must actually have been paid to the government by your supplier, and the supplier must have reported the invoice. A supplier who does not file is a supplier who costs you credit, which is why supplier compliance ratings matter commercially.

E-invoicing and e-way bill obligations begin above prescribed turnover levels, and those levels have been lowered progressively. Check whether you have crossed into scope rather than assuming that what applied when you registered still applies.

Keep the records for the statutory retention period. In a dispute, the burden of showing that a credit was properly claimed sits with you, not the department.

Business details change and the portal distinguishes between core and non-core amendments. Core changes — legal name, principal place of business, addition or deletion of promoters — require officer approval. Non-core changes take effect on submission. Failing to amend an address after moving is a common and entirely avoidable ground for a notice.

Cancellation can be voluntary or by the officer. Voluntary cancellation is applied for on the portal, and you cannot simply stop filing and walk away — the registration remains live and the liabilities keep accruing until cancellation is granted.

Cancellation does not extinguish what you already owe. You must file all returns up to the date of cancellation and file a final return, and you may have to reverse credit on stock held on that date. This is precisely why registering speculatively is expensive: exiting requires you to clean up the entire filing history first.

An officer can cancel a registration for continued non-filing, for issuing invoices without supply, or for non-commencement of business. Suo motu cancellation can be revoked on application within a limited period, and after that the route is an appeal.

If your registration was cancelled and you need to trade, do not simply register afresh on the same PAN to escape the history — the department links registrations by PAN and the earlier liabilities follow you.

Free help exists. The GST self-service and grievance portal handles portal and technical issues and produces a ticket you can escalate, and the CBIC FAQs and sectoral FAQs answer most substantive questions without a fee. A chartered accountant genuinely earns their fee on complex supply chains, credit disputes and assessments — not on filing a nil return.