Indian GST for foreign suppliers — affordable, fixed fee

Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: digital services to Indian consumers fall in a dedicated regime with simplified registration, while supplies to Indian businesses may be handled by the recipient under reverse charge.

That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.

It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.

An office is not what triggers the obligation. India looks at what you supply and to whom. A foreign supplier of taxable services to Indian consumers falls inside a dedicated regime with a simplified registration route, and registration there does not depend on having premises or staff in the country. Supplies made to Indian businesses are a different question, because the recipient may be required to account for the tax itself under the reverse charge. So the first piece of work is never the registration form. It is establishing, customer by customer, which side of that line your sales sit on, because that determines whether you register at all.

They may well be right, and if they are, you do not collect Indian tax on that sale. The reverse charge shifts the accounting obligation to the recipient where the recipient is a business. What matters is whether that is true of every customer, or only of the ones who told you. A supplier who takes the customer's word on the whole book usually finds a group of consumers mixed in among the businesses, and those supplies belong in the consumer regime instead. Keep the evidence of status that you relied on for each customer, because that evidence is what supports the treatment if it is later questioned.

The consumer-facing regime for foreign suppliers is built around a representative and its own return cycle, so a foreign supplier is not simply issued a number and left to file. Appointing someone, and agreeing what they are responsible for, is part of the registration rather than an optional extra afterwards. That relationship also decides practical things: who holds the credentials, who prepares the periodic returns, and who receives correspondence from the authorities. Settle it before the registration goes in. Suppliers who register first and arrange the representative afterwards tend to miss their first return cycle while the arrangement is still being negotiated.

Usually it does some of it. A marketplace that collects tax on the sales it processes leaves untouched every sale you make outside it: direct subscriptions, invoices raised to a business, renewals taken on your own payment page. The common mistake is reading the marketplace's tax report as a statement about your whole Indian turnover. It is a statement about the marketplace's own channel. Split your Indian revenue by channel first, then ask which regime each channel sits in. The residue outside the marketplace is what decides whether you have a registration obligation of your own, and it is frequently larger than the operator's report suggests.

By collecting and keeping something that shows it, at the point of sale rather than afterwards. Customer status is the fact that decides which treatment applies, so it is the fact an auditor will test first. A registration number supplied by the customer, a business address, the nature of the entity on the invoice and the account's own sign-up data all contribute. What does not work is a self-declaration tick box with nothing behind it. Build the check into the checkout and the invoicing system so that the evidence is created automatically as sales are made. Reconstructing status for several years of past customers is slow and often inconclusive.

Start by sizing it rather than by filing something. Work out, for each past period, how much of the Indian revenue was consumer-facing, how much went to businesses that would have accounted for the tax themselves, and how much was collected by a marketplace on your behalf. Those three buckets have very different consequences, and the exposure is usually smaller than the gross Indian turnover implies. Once the position is quantified you can decide how to approach the authorities and in what order to register and correct. Doing it the other way round, registering first and analysing later, forecloses options that are open while the position is still being prepared.

Tax collected at source. When a resident individual remits money abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme — or buys an overseas tour package — the bank or seller collects an amount of tax on top and deposits it against your PAN. It is not a cost and it is not a final tax: it appears in your annual tax statement and is set off against the tax on your return, with the excess refunded. The rates and the purposes they attach to have been amended repeatedly, so we confirm them for the remittance year. See LRS limits and TCS.

A remittance is a transfer of money, not a category of income, and moving your own funds between your own accounts is not what creates tax. What can create tax is the income behind the money and the rules of the country it leaves. India, for instance, collects tax at source when a resident individual remits abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, and requires certification before certain payments leave. The transfer is the trigger for paperwork rather than for tax. See the LRS and tax collected at source.