Does a foreign company have to register for GST in India?
If you supply taxable services to Indian consumers, yes, and the obligation attaches to you as supplier rather than being collected from the customer. There is a dedicated regime for this with a simplified registration route, so you are not setting up an Indian company or a branch in order to comply. What you are taking on is a registration in your own name, a representative in India through whom it is held, and a return cycle that runs whether or not you sell in a given period. The threshold question is not size. It is whether your customers are consumers, because supplies to Indian businesses are dealt with differently.
How do I tell if my Indian customer is a business or a consumer?
This is the whole determination, so make it on evidence rather than on assumption. A registered business customer can normally give you its registration particulars, and that is what moves a sale out of the consumer regime and into the recipient's hands. Where a customer cannot or will not, you are dealing with a consumer sale and the tax is yours to charge and account for. Build the check into the sign-up flow rather than into a later reconciliation: collecting a registration number at the point of sale is straightforward, and asking a customer for it months afterwards usually fails.
What is reverse charge and does it apply to my Indian sales?
Reverse charge moves the accounting for the tax from you to your Indian business customer, who accounts for it on its own return. It applies by reference to the customer's status rather than to your preference, and where it applies you do not charge the tax. The practical consequence is that a supplier selling only to Indian businesses can have a very different compliance position from one selling to consumers. Mixed books are where this goes wrong: the same service, sold to two kinds of customer, produces two treatments, and only the customer-status evidence tells them apart.
Do I need a representative in India to register for GST?
Registration under the regime is held through a representative in India, so the appointment is part of getting registered rather than something to arrange afterwards. That person needs the sales data, the customer-status evidence and enough of your invoicing detail to file, on the cycle the regime sets. Choose on the basis of who will actually hold the records and answer questions about them, because that appointment is where the compliance sits in practice. A representative who receives a spreadsheet once a period, with no visibility of how the sales were classified, cannot support filings that carry their name.
What if I sell to both Indian businesses and consumers?
Then you run two treatments side by side, and the classification has to be carried in the data. Consumer sales sit in the supplier regime, where you charge and account for the tax; business sales are generally left to the recipient. Nothing about the service itself distinguishes them, which is why the customer-status field has to be captured at the point of sale and kept. When we take on a mixed book, the first task is usually to work backwards through it and establish which sales had real evidence of business status and which rested on an assumption.
Do I file Indian GST returns if I have no Indian entity?
Yes. The regime exists precisely so that a supplier with no Indian entity can be registered and can file. The return cycle is its own; it does not attach to an Indian company's filings, and it does not pause because a period was quiet. Suppliers come unstuck here more often than at registration itself: the registration is obtained, the representative is appointed, and then the periodic filing drifts because nobody internally owns it. Name the person who owns the cycle, and give them the sales extract they need, before the first period closes.
How does an NRI prove residence to get the treaty rate?
With a tax residency certificate issued by the country you are resident in, plus Form 10F giving the details the certificate does not carry, plus a PAN in the payer's records. The certificate has to cover the period of the payment, and the payer needs it before paying, not afterwards. Missing any of the three and the deductor is obliged to withhold at the domestic rate, which turns a rate reduction into a refund claim. See TRC against Form 10F.
How do I get a refund of TCS collected on a foreign remittance?
You claim it on your Indian return for that year. The collected amount is credited against your total tax, and if it exceeds the tax due the balance is refunded like any excess payment. Two practical conditions: the collector must have filed its statement so the credit appears in your annual tax statement, and your PAN must be correctly recorded on the remittance. A salaried remitter can also ask their employer to account for it against salary withholding. See LRS limits and TCS.
