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GST invoice requirements in India

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A GST invoice in India must show your GSTIN, the customer's details, an itemised list of what you supplied, and the GST shown separately with its rate — currently 5%, 18%, 40%, with 18% as the usual rate for most services.

What goes on the document

On top of the universal fields — invoice number, dates, both parties, line items and total — India expects:

The India rule that catches people out

India splits the rate depending on where the customer is. A sale inside your own state is charged as CGST + SGST — half the rate each — and a sale to another state is IGST at the full rate. The total the customer pays is identical; the split matters for your return. Your invoice has to show the place of supply so the split can be checked.

Rates

5%, 18%, 40%. Most service work sits at 18%. The slabs were simplified in September 2025: most 12% items moved to 5% and most 28% items to 18%, with 40% kept for luxury and sin goods.

Rates change. Checked to mid-2026 and a starting point, not tax advice. The current source is Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs — and if you are near a registration threshold, twenty minutes with an accountant beats a search engine.

When you have to register for GST in India

₹40 lakh of turnover for goods and ₹20 lakh for services in most states, halved in the special-category states. Once you cross, registration is required within thirty days — and the liability starts from the date you crossed, not the date you registered.

Most systems test this on a rolling twelve months rather than your financial year — which is where the expensive mistakes happen.

Which GST rate applies to what

5% covers most essentials and a wide band of services moved down in the 2025 simplification; 18% is the workhorse rate for professional and trade services; 40% is reserved for luxury and sin goods. Nil-rated is not the same as exempt, and the difference decides whether you can claim input credit.

The place of supply field

Indian invoices carry a place-of-supply code because it decides the CGST/SGST versus IGST split. Get it wrong and the tax lands in the wrong government's account, which is a correction exercise rather than a fine — but it is your correction exercise. For services, the default is the recipient's location where they are registered, and their address on record where they are not.

E-invoicing and the IRN

Businesses above the e-invoicing turnover threshold must report B2B invoices to the Invoice Registration Portal and print the resulting IRN and QR code on the document. Below the threshold this does not apply, but the threshold has been lowered repeatedly since 2020 and is worth re-checking annually rather than assuming you are still outside it.

Tax on a discounted invoice

One that gets miscalculated constantly: when you show a discount on the invoice, GST is charged on the discounted amount, not the list price. Bill ₹4,100, discount 5%, and the taxable value is ₹3,895 — not ₹4,100. At 18% that is ₹701.1 of GST, not ₹738. Getting this backwards means you collect more tax than you owe and hand it over, out of your own margin — on every invoice you issue until someone notices.

Invoicing a customer outside India

Export of services is zero-rated, either under a Letter of Undertaking without paying IGST or by paying IGST and claiming a refund. The conditions are strict: payment must be received in convertible foreign exchange and the recipient must be outside India.

Charging tax to a client in another country sets out the general shape; the first time it comes up it is worth an hour with an accountant.

Record keeping in India

Six years from the due date of the annual return — in practice, keep the invoice itself for at least seven. Retention rules mean the document, not a row in a ledger.

Set your country once in EstimateBill and the tax is labelled correctly on every invoice after that — GST and GSTIN in India, VAT in the UK, Sales Tax and EIN in the US, across 58 countries.