Is my service an OIDAR service under Indian GST?
Start with how the service reaches the customer. The definition is drawn broadly, wide enough to cover most delivery that happens automatically once the customer has paid, which means the instinct that we are not a database company, so this cannot apply to us is usually wrong. The safer approach is to describe each product in terms of what actually happens after the order: what the customer receives, what triggers it, and whether anyone does anything specific for that customer. Then test each description against the definition, product by product, rather than settling the question once for the whole company.
Does OIDAR still apply if a person delivers part of the service?
Then the description has to be honest about how much that person does. A broad definition catches delivery that is essentially automatic, so a light human wrapper around an automated product does not usually take it outside. Where a named person genuinely performs work for that particular client, and the automated element is incidental to it, you are arguing a different characterisation, and you will be arguing it on your own contracts, marketing copy and delivery records. Which is why those three should say the same thing. Companies lose this point on their own website wording more often than on the law.
Can one company be inside OIDAR for some products and outside for others?
Yes, and a company with a range of products usually is. The determination runs per product rather than per entity, because it depends on what the customer receives and how it is delivered. A self-serve tier that provisions itself and a bespoke engagement delivered by named staff can sit on opposite sides of the line while sharing one brand and one invoice template. The practical consequence is that the product catalogue becomes a tax document: each line needs a stated characterisation, a reason and a tax code, and new products need the question asked before launch rather than after.
What records support the OIDAR classification I have taken?
Describe the delivery, not the label. What supports a characterisation is the material showing how the service actually works: the contract, the product description the customer saw, the provisioning records, and an account of what, if anything, a person does for that specific customer. Keep it per product and date it, because products change and a classification that was right at launch may not survive a redesign. Where the position was arguable, write down why you took it at the time. A characterisation you cannot explain later is hard to distinguish from one you never made.
Do I charge Indian tax on sales to a registered business?
Generally the tax on a sale to a registered Indian business is accounted for by the recipient rather than charged by you, so the consumer-facing regime is not what governs that sale. That means two determinations in sequence: whether the service falls in the regime at all, and whether this particular customer takes the accounting out of your hands. Both have to be answered from evidence, the product's own delivery description for the first and the customer's registration particulars for the second. Where the second is missing you are dealing with a consumer sale, whatever the customer's name suggests about its size.
What if I classified a product as outside OIDAR and was wrong?
Treat it as a historical exercise rather than a forward change of practice. Establish when the product started being delivered in the way that brings it inside, because that is the date from which sales should have been treated differently, and it is often earlier than the date anyone noticed. Then separate the affected sales by customer status, since business customers may already have accounted for the tax themselves. What you are assembling is a corrected position with a narrative: what the product does, when that became true, and what is owed on which sales. Volunteering that is a stronger place to stand than defending a silence.
What is the Liberalised Remittance Scheme?
The Reserve Bank of India framework under which a resident individual may remit up to an annual ceiling for permitted purposes — education, medical treatment, travel, maintenance of relatives, investment in shares or property abroad — with gifts and loans to non-residents inside the same ceiling. You declare the purpose to the bank on Form A2. The ceiling and the excluded purposes are set by the RBI and have changed more than once, so the figure to work from is the one current at the date of the transfer. See Form A2 and LRS remittances.
Do NRIs have to file an Indian tax return?
If you have Indian-source income above the filing threshold, or you want a refund of tax withheld at source, or you are claiming treaty relief — then yes. Interest, rent, capital gains on Indian shares or property, and TDS deducted at a rate higher than your real liability all commonly force or reward a return. Filing is also how a lower-rate treaty claim and a foreign tax credit get onto the record. See NRI tax return filing.
