Most guides to selling on Amazon India treat GST as a box to tick. It is the step that most often stalls a launch, because sellers discover a requirement weeks after ordering inventory that is now sitting in a warehouse it cannot legally ship from.
This is the sequence, what triggers each requirement, and the parts that catch people out.
One caution up front. This is a working overview, not tax advice, and GST rules change. Confirm anything with consequences against the GST portal or a chartered accountant before you act on it. Where a detail matters to your specific situation, that is the cheaper conversation.
The Threshold Does Not Apply to You
The most common and most expensive misunderstanding.
There is a turnover threshold below which businesses need not register for GST, commonly cited as ₹40 lakh for goods and ₹20 lakh for services. New sellers read this and conclude they can start without registering.
That exemption does not extend to sellers on ecommerce marketplaces. Anyone supplying goods through an operator like Amazon must be registered regardless of turnover. Your first sale requires a GSTIN, not your first ₹40 lakh.
Amazon enforces this at the account level. You will not get far in registration without it.
The narrow exception is certain service providers selling through a marketplace, who may fall under a different rule. If you sell goods, assume registration is mandatory.
What You Need Before Registering
Gather these first. Missing one is what turns a two-week process into a two-month one.
- PAN for the business or the individual
- Aadhaar of the proprietor, partners, or directors, for authentication
- Proof of business address: electricity bill, rent agreement plus the owner's ownership proof, or a property tax receipt
- Bank account details: cancelled cheque or a bank statement showing name, account number, and IFSC
- Photographs of the proprietor, partners, or directors
- Digital signature for companies and LLPs; proprietors can use Aadhaar OTP
- Constitution documents: partnership deed, certificate of incorporation, as applicable
Address proof is where applications fail. The document must match the address on the application exactly, and rented premises need both the rent agreement and the landlord's ownership proof. A mismatched flat number is enough to generate a query and add three weeks.
Registration, in Order
- Create a Temporary Reference Number on the GST portal with PAN, mobile, and email.
- Complete the application with business details, place of business, bank details, and the goods you deal in using HSN codes.
- Authenticate with Aadhaar OTP where eligible. This is significantly faster than the physical verification route.
- Upload documents.
- Await approval, typically 7 to 21 working days without queries.
- Receive your GSTIN, a 15-character identifier encoding state and PAN.
Then add it in Amazon Seller Central under Settings, then Tax Settings. Multiple state GSTINs can be added, which matters for the next section.
The FBA Complication: Multi-State Registration
This is the part that catches FBA sellers specifically, and the part worth reading twice.
Under GST, the fulfilment centre holding your stock is treated as your place of business in that state. Storing inventory in a state generally requires a GSTIN registered in that state.
Amazon's FBA network spans many states, and Amazon may distribute your inventory across fulfilment centres to shorten delivery times. Left unmanaged, that can create registration obligations in states you have never visited.
Practical approaches:
Start in one state. Register where you are, and use Amazon's settings to restrict inventory placement to fulfilment centres in that state where the option is available. Simpler, at the cost of slower delivery to distant customers and higher national fulfilment fees.
Register in the states you want to store in. More compliance overhead, meaning separate returns per state, but faster delivery and lower fulfilment costs.
Consider Easy Ship or FBM instead. You hold the stock, so it never sits in another state, and your single registration covers you. Worth weighing if compliance overhead is the binding constraint. Our comparison of FBA and FBM covers the wider trade-off.
Most sellers should start with one state and expand deliberately, rather than discovering the obligation from a notice.
TCS: Amazon Collects Some Tax For You
Marketplaces collect Tax Collected at Source on the net value of taxable supplies made through them. Amazon deducts it before paying you and deposits it against your GSTIN.
Two consequences.
It is not a cost, it is a prepayment. TCS appears as a credit in your electronic cash ledger and offsets your own liability. Cash flow effect, not margin effect.
You have to claim it. It sits in your ledger until you file the relevant return to accept it. Sellers who never file leave money there indefinitely.
Reconcile what Amazon reports against your own records monthly rather than annually. Mismatches are far easier to resolve close to the event.
Returns and Filing
A registered seller files regularly, whether or not sales occurred. Typically that means a monthly or quarterly return for outward supplies, a monthly summary return with payment, and an annual return above the applicable turnover.
Nil returns still have to be filed. Late fees accrue per day, per return, and they accrue on nil filings too. Sellers who pause trading and stop filing come back to a bill.
Amazon provides GST reports in Seller Central covering sales, returns, and TCS. They are the raw material for filing, not the filing itself.
Invoicing
Every order needs a GST-compliant invoice with your GSTIN, the buyer's GSTIN where B2B, HSN codes, the taxable value, and the tax split.
The split depends on geography. Same state as the customer means CGST plus SGST. Different state means IGST. Under FBA this is determined by which fulfilment centre shipped, which is another reason inventory placement is a compliance question and not only a logistics one.
Amazon can generate compliant invoices automatically, and for most sellers that is the right choice rather than handling it manually.
Input Tax Credit
The part that gets left on the table.
You can generally claim credit for GST paid on business inputs: the goods you bought to sell, Amazon's fees, advertising spend, packaging, software, and professional services. Amazon charges GST on referral and FBA fees, and that is creditable.
To claim it, the supplier must have filed correctly so the invoice appears in your auto-populated statement. Keep every invoice, and check that your suppliers are filing. A supplier who does not file costs you the credit, which is a real reason to prefer GST-compliant suppliers even at a slightly higher price.
The Order to Do This In
- Register for GST before ordering inventory. Not after. Stock you cannot legally ship is stock paying storage fees.
- Sort address proof first. It is the most common reason for delay.
- Decide your fulfilment model before registering, because FBA across states changes what you need.
- Add the GSTIN in Seller Central and enable automated invoicing.
- Set a monthly reconciliation habit for TCS and input credit from month one.
- File every period, including nil ones.
Get Help With the Parts That Bite
A chartered accountant familiar with ecommerce is worth the fee, particularly on multi-state FBA questions. The cost of the advice is small next to a registration issue discovered when your inventory is already in a fulfilment centre.
If you are still at the earlier stage of deciding whether the business works at all, our Amazon FBA fee breakdown and product research guide come first.
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