GST registration in India: thresholds and the return calendar

India does not have one GST registration threshold. It has several, and the one that bites turns on what a business supplies and on the State it supplies from. A supplier dealing only in goods may stay outside the tax until aggregate turnover in a financial year reaches ₹40 lakh, or ₹20 lakh, according to what that State chose. Services work differently. There the figure is ₹20 lakh, and ₹10 lakh in four States.

The statute is more conservative than the numbers in circulation. Section 22(1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 makes a supplier liable to register where aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds twenty lakh rupees, and ten lakh rupees where the supply is made from a special category State. The larger figures sit in provisos. The Government may raise the special category limit to twenty lakh, and may raise the ordinary limit to forty lakh for a supplier engaged exclusively in the supply of goods. Both need a request from the State concerned and a recommendation of the GST Council. The operative number is therefore a State decision resting on a central enabling power.

Which States count as special category

The Act defines the term by reference to sub-clause (g) of clause (4) of article 279A of the Constitution, then takes most of those States back out. Article 279A(4)(g), inserted by the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, names eleven States. The explanation to section 22 excludes Jammu and Kashmir, then excludes Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. Four are left. Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura are the States where ten lakh rupees is the statutory starting point.

One line in section 22 is easy to miss. A person still counts as engaged exclusively in the supply of goods, and so within reach of forty lakh, even where he also earns interest or discount by extending deposits, loans or advances.

How forty lakh came about

The two-limit structure was settled at the 32nd meeting of the GST Council on 10 January 2019. The Ministry of Finance recorded two threshold limits for exemption from registration and payment of GST for suppliers of goods, ₹40 lakh and ₹20 lakh, with the States given a week to decide which one they wanted. The service provider threshold stayed at ₹20 lakh, and ₹10 lakh for special category States, operational from 1 April 2019. A business supplying from two States can face a different limit in each.

Registration that no threshold prevents

Those are the opening words of section 24, and turnover is beside the point for everything it lists. The Act requires registration for:

• persons making any inter-State taxable supply
• casual taxable persons making taxable supply
• persons required to pay tax under reverse charge
• persons required to pay tax under section 9(5)
• non-resident taxable persons making taxable supply
• persons required to deduct tax under section 51
• persons who supply on behalf of other taxable persons, as agent or otherwise
• Input Service Distributors
• persons supplying through an electronic commerce operator required to collect tax at source under section 52
• every electronic commerce operator required to collect tax at source under section 52
• every person supplying online information and database access or retrieval services from outside India to an unregistered person in India

That list comes from the consolidated Act CBIC publishes, current only to 30 September 2020, and it is out of date: the same text carries no proviso to section 39(1), although the return rules refer to one. CBIC's note says only the Acts published in the Gazette have the force of law.

Thirty days, and one registration per State

Section 25(1) allows thirty days from the date a person becomes liable, and the application is made in every State or Union territory where the liability arises. A casual taxable person or a non-resident taxable person applies at least five days before commencing business. A unit in a Special Economic Zone, or an SEZ developer, takes a separate registration from any place of business outside the zone in the same State.

The monthly calendar

GSTR-3B is the return that carries the money. Rule 61(1)(i) of the CGST Rules requires it on or before the twentieth day of the month succeeding the month. Payment is not a separate deadline: section 39(7) requires the tax due as per the return to be paid no later than the last date for furnishing it. FORM GSTR-1, the statement of outward supplies under section 37, is prescribed by rule 59, and its date has moved more than once. Notification No. 83/2020-Central Tax fixed the current dates with effect from 1 January 2021: the eleventh day of the month succeeding the tax period for a monthly filer, and the thirteenth day for a person filing under the quarterly proviso to section 39(1). Nothing since has superseded that notification.

Quarterly returns, monthly money

GSTR-3B can be furnished quarterly instead. Rule 61A fixes the window for opting in: from the first day of the second month of the preceding quarter until the last day of the first month of the quarter for which the option is exercised. Once exercised it carries forward. Nobody may opt in while the last return then due is unfiled. Cross five crore rupees of aggregate turnover during the year and monthly filing resumes, from the first month of the following quarter.

Filing quarterly does not mean paying quarterly. Rule 61(3) requires a deposit in FORM GST PMT-06 for each of the first two months of the quarter, by the twenty-fifth day of the month that follows. For the first month the electronic cash ledger balance may be taken into account; for the second, that balance less the tax due for the first month.

Customers of a quarterly filer need invoices sooner than a quarter allows, and rule 59(2) provides the invoice furnishing facility for that. Supplies made to a registered person may be uploaded for each of the first two months, up to a cumulative fifty lakh rupees in each month, from the first day of the following month until the thirteenth. Those invoices are not repeated in the quarterly GSTR-1.

The composition scheme

Section 10 lets a registered person pay a proportion of turnover instead of tax on each supply. It sets eligibility at fifty lakh rupees of aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year, with a proviso allowing the Government to raise that to not more than one crore and fifty lakh rupees. Notification No. 14/2019-Central Tax used that power from 1 April 2019: ₹1.5 crore generally, and ₹75 lakh for a registered person in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura or Uttarakhand.

The scheme is narrow. Section 10(2) rules out anyone who supplies services beyond the allowance, supplies goods not leviable to tax, makes inter-State outward supplies of goods, supplies through an electronic commerce operator required to collect tax at source, manufactures notified goods, or is a casual or non-resident taxable person. Where several registrations share one PAN, all opt in or none may. The services allowance is ten per cent of turnover in the State in the preceding financial year, or five lakh rupees, whichever is higher.

Those are central tax rates. State tax is charged at the same rate under the corresponding State Act, which is where the familiar combined figures come from. The Council said it outright for the section 10(2A) route: six per cent, three per cent central and three per cent State, for a supplier of services or a mixed supplier with turnover up to ₹50 lakh in the preceding year.

Composition taxpayers do not file GSTR-3B. Rule 62(1)(i) requires a statement of self-assessed tax in FORM GST CMP-08 every quarter, by the eighteenth day of the month after it, and section 39(2) says the same in days: within eighteen days of the quarter ending. An annual return in FORM GSTR-4 follows under rule 62(1)(ii), originally due by the thirtieth of April after the financial year closes. Notification No. 12/2024-Central Tax moved that to the thirtieth of June, for FY 2024-25 onward.

What changed in 2025

The Council's 56th meeting, on 3 September 2025, recommended an optional simplified registration scheme. Registration is granted on an automated basis within three working days for low risk applicants, and for applicants who determine on their own assessment that their output tax liability on supplies to registered persons will not exceed ₹2.5 lakh a month, counting central, State or Union territory and integrated tax together. Opting in and withdrawing are voluntary. The Council put the reach at around 96 per cent of new applicants and set 1 November 2025 for operation.

The same meeting approved in principle a simplified registration for small suppliers selling through electronic commerce operators across several States, who at present must maintain a principal place of business in each. The modalities were to come back to the Council.

Before assuming ₹40 lakh applies, confirm what your State actually adopted. The Council gave the States a week in January 2019 to pick one of the two limits, and they picked separately.