GST Registration in India: When and How to Register

Key takeaways

• GST registration issues a GSTIN, a 15-digit PAN-linked number required to legally collect GST and claim input tax credit (ITC).
• Under Section 22, registration is mandatory once turnover crosses ₹40 lakh for goods or ₹20 lakh for services, and ₹20 lakh or ₹10 lakh in special category states.
• Section 24 requires registration regardless of turnover for inter-state suppliers, reverse charge payers, and most e-commerce sellers, with a narrow exemption for small intra-state goods sellers below the threshold.
• DPIIT-recognised startups follow the same GST rules as any other company; there is no separate GST carve-out for startups.
• GST registration can be filed at incorporation via Form INC-35 (AGILE-PRO-S), but only if the correspondence address matches the registered office.
• Since 1 November 2025, Rule 14A lets eligible low-risk B2B suppliers get GSTIN approval within 3 working days; others follow the standard 7-to-30 day route.
• Under Rule 10A, bank account details are due within 30 days of registration or before the first GSTR-1 filing, or the GSTIN is auto-suspended.
• Failing to register despite being liable carries a penalty of ₹10,000 or the tax evaded, whichever is higher, under Section 122(1)(xi) of the CGST Act, plus interest.

What GST registration means for your company

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is India's unified indirect tax on the supply of goods and services. GST registration is the process by which your company enrols under this system and receives a GSTIN (Goods and Services Tax Identification Number), a 15-digit number linked to your company's PAN.

Registration makes three specific things legally possible: issuing a valid tax invoice that shows GST separately, collecting that GST from your customers, and claiming input tax credit (ITC), which is a credit for the GST your company has already paid on its own purchases, set off against the GST it owes on sales. 

An unregistered company can do none of these. It cannot show GST on an invoice, so its GST-registered customers cannot claim ITC on that purchase either, which is often the practical reason larger clients ask for a GSTIN before they will sign a contract.

When GST registration is mandatory: turnover thresholds under Section 22

Section 22 of the CGST Act, 2017 sets the baseline rule: a supplier must register once aggregate turnover in a financial year crosses a prescribed limit. Aggregate turnover means the total value of all taxable supplies, exempt supplies, exports, and inter-state supplies computed on a PAN basis, not per GSTIN, so revenue from every branch or vertical under the same company counts toward the same limit.

The limit itself depends on what you supply and where you are registered. CBIC Notification No. 10/2019-Central Tax, dated 7 March 2019, effective 1 April 2019, raised these limits from their original 2017 levels:

• ₹40 lakh, for a company exclusively supplying goods, in states under the normal category
• ₹20 lakh, for a company supplying services, or a mix of goods and services, in states under the normal category
• ₹20 lakh (goods) and ₹10 lakh (services), in states notified as special category states

The goods threshold only applies if your company supplies goods exclusively. The moment any part of your revenue comes from a service, even a small consulting or maintenance fee alongside a product sale, the lower services threshold governs your entire turnover, not just the services portion of it.

GST registration triggers that apply regardless of turnover

Section 24 of the CGST Act lists categories of suppliers who must register the moment they start that activity, irrespective of turnover:

• Inter-state suppliers of goods. Because GST is a destination-based tax split between the origin and destination states, a supply that crosses a state border needs a registered identity from the first transaction so the correct state gets its share of tax, not just once revenue becomes large.
• E-commerce sellers, with one narrow exception. A company selling services through a platform, or selling goods inter-state through an e-commerce operator such as Amazon or Flipkart, must register regardless of turnover, because the platform is separately required to deduct tax collected at source (TCS) against a valid GSTIN and cannot do so for an unregistered seller. Since 1 October 2023, CBIC Notification No. 34/2023-Central Tax carves out an exception for small goods sellers: if you supply goods only within a single state or union territory, make no inter-state supply of goods, and stay below the Section 22 threshold, you can sell through an e-commerce operator without full registration, provided you declare your PAN and obtain an enrolment number on the common portal before making any supply.
• Persons liable to pay tax under reverse charge. Normally the supplier collects and remits GST. Under reverse charge, that liability shifts to the recipient (for example, when your company pays certain notified services from an unregistered vendor), and registration is required so that liability has somewhere to attach.
• Casual taxable persons and non-resident taxable persons. A company or individual supplying goods or services occasionally in a state where it has no fixed place of business, or a foreign entity supplying into India without a local establishment, must register for the specific, time-bound period of that activity.

Does DPIIT startup status change GST registration rules?

No. GST registration under Sections 22 and 24 applies identically to a company recognised as a startup by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and to any other company. A one-year-old DPIIT-recognised company and a forty-year-old trading firm cross the same turnover threshold under the same section.

Voluntary GST registration before you cross the threshold

A company below the Section 22 threshold, and outside every Section 24 category, is not required to register, but it can choose to register anyway. This decision usually comes up at one of two moments: at incorporation, or once turnover starts approaching the threshold.

Registering before you're required to have three concrete uses:

1. It lets you claim ITC on GST paid for software subscriptions, office rent, and professional fees from the day of registration rather than losing that credit until you cross the threshold. 
2. It is often what B2B clients and larger vendors expect before they'll extend payment terms or sign a contract, since dealing with an unregistered supplier means they cannot claim ITC on anything they buy from you. 
3. A clean GST registration history, with returns filed on time from an early date, is often one of the smaller items checked during fundraising due diligence, since its absence is easy to spot and asks an obvious question.

If you're deciding whether to apply for GST as part of incorporation itself, see our guide on the company incorporation process in India for how AGILE-PRO-S fits into the broader SPICe+ filing.

Regular GST registration vs. the composition scheme

Regular registration lets you charge GST at the applicable rate on every invoice and claim ITC on your purchases, in exchange for filing returns monthly or quarterly with invoice-level detail. The composition scheme under Section 10 of the CGST Act lets you pay a flat, low percentage of turnover instead, with a single quarterly payment and one annual return, but you give up ITC entirely and cannot make inter-state supplies.

The scheme is available up to ₹1.5 crore turnover for goods (₹75 lakh in certain special category states) under Notification No. 14/2019-Central Tax, or a separate ₹50 lakh scheme for services under Section 10(2A) and Notification No. 2/2019-Central Tax (Rate). 

For a services or SaaS business scaling toward institutional fundraising, composition rarely fits: such companies typically want ITC on their software and infrastructure costs and often supply across state lines from day one, both of which composition rules out. 

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GST registration documents by business structure

The documents required depend on how your company is structured. For a private limited company, you will need:  

• The Certificate of Incorporation
• PAN of the company
• Identity and address proof (PAN, Aadhaar, and a photograph) for each director or authorised signatory
• Proof of your principal place of business: a rent agreement plus a recent utility bill and a no-objection certificate from the owner if the premises are leased, or a property tax receipt if owned
• Bank account proof, typically a cancelled cheque or the first page of a bank passbook. Under Rule 10A this can now be added within 30 days of registration rather than at the point of application.

For an LLP, the equivalent entity documents are the Certificate of Incorporation, PAN of the LLP, and the LLP Agreement. For a proprietorship, the proprietor's own PAN generally suffices, since there is no separate legal entity.

Authentication happens through either Aadhaar-based OTP verification or a registered Digital Signature Certificate (DSC). A private limited company or LLP must use a DSC that is separately registered on the GST portal; a DSC that works on the MCA portal will not automatically be recognised here.

How to register for GST, step by step

Registration is filed on the GST portal through Form GST REG-01, in two parts.

Part A asks for your PAN, mobile number, and email address, and generates a Temporary Reference Number (TRN) after OTP verification on both.

Part B, filed using the TRN, is where you enter business details, the address of your principal place of business, details of promoters and authorised signatories, and the goods or services you supply, identified by HSN code for goods or SAC code for services (the classification system GST uses to apply the correct tax rate), and upload the supporting documents described above.

Once submitted, the portal issues an Application Reference Number (ARN), which you can use to track your application's status. What happens next depends on how the system assesses risk, covered below, since this is the point where timelines diverge sharply depending on which track your application follows.

GST registration timeline: standard route vs. the Rule 14A fast-track

Under the standard route, governed by Rule 8 of the CGST Rules, 2017, the portal runs a risk assessment on every application using data analysis and risk parameters. GSTN completed a state-by-state rollout of biometric-based Aadhaar authentication through 2025, and this risk assessment now applies nationwide. Applicants assessed as low-risk complete Aadhaar authentication by OTP and proceed without a physical visit. Applicants flagged by the risk assessment must instead complete biometric authentication and in-person document verification at a designated GST Suvidha Kendra, which typically extends approval to the higher end of the standard 7-to-30 working day range.

Separately, the Central Goods and Services Tax (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2025, notified vide Notification No. 18/2025-Central Tax dated 31 October 2025, inserted two new provisions into the CGST Rules effective 1 November 2025. These work differently from each other. Rule 9A lets the portal's risk-based system grant registration electronically to applicants it identifies as low-risk, with no opt-in required. Rule 14A is a separate, opt-in fast-track: a company whose monthly output tax liability on business-to-business supplies does not exceed ₹2.5 lakh can select this option during REG-01 filing, complete Aadhaar authentication, and receive electronic approval within 3 working days, with no physical verification. If your monthly B2B tax liability later exceeds that limit, you're required to withdraw from the scheme via Form GST REG-32.

On approval under any of these routes, the portal issues the GSTIN along with a certificate of registration in Form GST REG-06. There is no government fee for GST registration itself; any cost typically comes only from a professional or consultant you engage to file it.

For a founder timing GST registration around a client contract or a funding close, the practical takeaway is that the timeline you should plan for depends on your risk profile and whether you qualify for Rule 14A.

Rule 10A: bank account details are due within 30 days

Under Rule 10A of the CGST Rules, a newly registered company must furnish its bank account details on the GST portal within 30 days of grant of registration, or before filing its first GSTR-1 return, whichever comes first. 

Penalties for late or non-registration under GST

Section 122(1)(xi) of the CGST Act sets the penalty for a person who is liable to be registered but fails to obtain registration at the higher of ₹10,000, or an amount equal to the tax evaded. This means the penalty scales with exposure: for a company with modest turnover and a small unpaid tax liability, the flat ₹10,000 applies, but for a company that has been trading for months above the threshold without registering, the penalty can run to the full amount of tax that should have been collected and paid.

Separately, the tax due itself does not disappear. The department can assess and demand GST on supplies made since the date registration became mandatory, together with interest under Section 50 of the CGST Act, currently 18% per annum, calculated from the original due date until the date of actual payment. Registering promptly once you cross the threshold avoids both the penalty and this compounding interest exposure.

FAQs on GST registration

How do startups register for GST? 

A startup registers the same way any company does: filing Form GST REG-01 on the GST portal with PAN, business, and address details, followed by Aadhaar or biometric authentication. There is no separate registration process for DPIIT-recognised startups.

Do I need GST if my turnover is below 20 lakhs? 

Not on turnover grounds alone, if you supply services and stay under the ₹20 lakh threshold (₹10 lakh in special category states). However, certain activities require registration regardless of turnover under Section 24 of the CGST Act, including inter-state supply, reverse charge liability, and selling services through an e-commerce platform. A narrow exception lets small businesses sell goods intra-state through a single e-commerce operator without full registration, provided they stay below the threshold and don't supply inter-state.

At what turnover do I need to register for GST? 

₹40 lakh for companies supplying goods exclusively, and ₹20 lakh for companies supplying services, in normal category states. Special category states have lower limits of ₹20 lakh and ₹10 lakh respectively.

From when will the GST registration start? 

If you apply within 30 days of becoming liable to register, your registration takes effect from the date you became liable. If you apply later, or register voluntarily, it takes effect from the date the GSTIN is actually granted.