Most people arrive at this question late. Not “should I register for GST” asked calmly in month one, but a colder version asked in month twenty: have I already gone past the limit without noticing, and how long ago? Usually something set it off — a client asked for your GSTIN, an accountant raised an eyebrow at your bank statement, or you added up a year of invoices for the first time and the total was larger than the one in your head.
The reason nobody can give you a straight answer is that there is more than one number in circulation, and the pages quoting them rarely say which is which. There is a threshold for services, a different and higher one for suppliers of goods, and a lower one for certain states. If you sell your own professional work — consulting, development, design, writing, marketing — the goods figure is not yours, and half the confusion evaporates the moment you stop reading it.
Have you already crossed the line?
Four questions, answered against your own records rather than your memory of them. Do these before reading anything else on this page:
- What is your total for the current financial year, to date? Every client, every platform, every one-off. Not your take-home, not what landed in the bank after fees — what you billed.
- Which state are you registered in for your own address? The threshold is not the same everywhere, and the state that matters is your place of business.
- Did you include the foreign clients? The single most common way people conclude they are under when they are over. Exports are zero-rated, which is not the same as invisible.
- Where were you last year? If last year was close to the line, this year's answer is likely to be a date rather than a “no”.
If those four produce a number comfortably below the threshold that applies to you, this page is planning rather than panic and you can read the rest at leisure. If they produce a number above it, keep going — the sections below are in the order you now need them.
Which threshold applies to a services professional
The short answer: if your aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds Rs. 20 lakh (Rs. 10 lakh for special category states), GST registration is mandatory. Below that threshold, it is voluntary.
| Category | Threshold Limit | States |
|---|---|---|
| Every state except the four below | Rs. 20,00,000 | All of them — including Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Jammu & Kashmir, which almost every published list still shows at Rs. 10 lakh. They were taken out of the special category definition for registration and are on Rs. 20 lakh. |
| Special category states, for registration | Rs. 10,00,000 | Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura — these four, and no others |
Three things people get wrong about that table, all of which change the answer. The first is the higher figure quoted for suppliers of goods — a real threshold, for a different category of supplier, which is why you keep seeing it and why it is not yours. A professional selling their own services is on the services line, and no amount of the goods number being repeated at you changes that. The second is the state column: your threshold follows your place of business, not where your clients are or where you happen to be working from this month.
The third is the one that costs the most, and nearly every site on the Indian internet gets it wrong: the special category list for registration has four states in it, not eleven. The eleven-state list you have seen everywhere comes from article 279A(4)(g) of the Constitution, and section 22 does not use it as-is. Explanation (iii) to that section takes the eleven and removes seven — Jammu & Kashmir first, then Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarakhand, with effect from 1 February 2019. If you work from Guwahati, Shimla, Dehradun, Shillong, Itanagar, Gangtok or Srinagar, your line is Rs. 20 lakh. Registering at Rs. 10 lakh because a blog told you to means charging 18% for roughly an extra year, to clients who often cannot claim it back — and there is no undo button on that. We wrote up the full statutory chain here.
What counts toward the number
“Aggregate turnover” has a specific definition under GST law, and it is broader than most freelancers expect. This is where people who thought they were safe find out they were not.
Aggregate turnover under Section 2(6) of the CGST Act is the value of all your taxable supplies, exempt supplies and exports (and inter-State supplies between your own registrations under the same PAN), computed across India — every fee you bill, not your salary. It is not limited to clients where you charged GST. Platform income from Upwork, Fiverr, and Toptal counts, at its gross value before the platform's fee. Direct client payments count. Even income from one-off gigs counts.
Excluded are the GST amounts themselves (CGST, SGST, IGST) and inward supplies on which you pay tax under reverse charge. Your freelance service income is always included.
Exports count. Platform earnings count. The number in your head is almost always your bank deposits net of fees, and the number that decides this is your billings gross of everything.
The date you crossed, not the date you register
This is the mechanism nobody explains, and it is the reason late registration is more awkward than late anything else: the obligation attaches to the crossing, not to the paperwork.
Read that last sentence again if you are here because you crossed some months ago. It is the whole of the problem and also its limit: the exposure runs from the crossing date forward, which is precisely why establishing that date is the first thing to do and quoting penalty figures at yourself is the last. What actually follows depends on the invoices in that window, their values, and whether the clients concerned can still be dealt with — facts a professional needs in front of them, and which we will not pretend to know from here.
Knowing before it mattersHourSlip totals your billings across every client and platform, including exports, and tells you where you stand against the registration line — so the crossing is a date you plan for rather than one you reconstruct afterwards.Clients in another state
A widely repeated claim says that any inter-state supply forces registration from your first rupee. For services, that has been overtaken, and the version still circulating causes real panic in people who are nowhere near the threshold.
If you make inter-state supplies (providing services to clients in a different state from where you are registered), GST registration was originally mandatory regardless of turnover. However, Notification 10/2017-Integrated Tax dated 13 October 2017 has exempted inter-state supply of services from this requirement if your aggregate turnover is below the threshold. So a freelancer in Bangalore serving clients in Mumbai does not need mandatory registration just because it is inter-state — the Rs. 20 lakh threshold still applies.
Foreign clients count toward the number too
Export of services is "zero-rated" under GST — you do not charge GST to foreign clients. People reasonably but wrongly conclude from this that export income sits outside the threshold calculation. It does not: exports are named in the aggregate turnover definition above. A consultant billing entirely to clients abroad can be past the line while having never charged a rupee of GST to anyone.
To export services without paying GST, you need to file a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) on the GST portal. The LUT covers one financial year, so file a fresh one for each year before that year's first export invoice. With an LUT in place, your export invoices carry the Rule 46 endorsement "Supply meant for export under bond or letter of undertaking without payment of integrated tax" — and no GST is collected from your foreign client. If you have already been invoicing abroad and are now unsure whether an LUT was ever filed, that question has its own page.
The benefit of voluntary GST registration for export freelancers: you can claim ITC on business expenses (laptop, software subscriptions, co-working space, internet bills) even though you are not collecting GST on your services. This is effectively a refund mechanism — the GST you pay on inputs can be claimed back.
If you are genuinely below: registering anyway
Even if your turnover is below Rs. 20 lakh, you can voluntarily register for GST under Section 25(3) of the CGST Act. Two situations make it worth doing rather than merely possible: you serve export clients and want the ITC refunds, or your corporate clients will not process a vendor without a GSTIN — which is a commercial fact rather than a legal one, and a common one. Here is the balanced view:
| Pros of Voluntary Registration | Cons of Voluntary Registration |
|---|---|
| Claim Input Tax Credit on business expenses | Must file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B every quarter/month |
| Looks more professional to corporate clients | 18% GST added to invoices increases cost for non-GST clients |
| Required for some B2B clients who need GST invoices | Compliance burden — late filing attracts late fees |
| Export freelancers can use LUT and claim ITC refund | Cancelling later is an application with its own clock, not a switch |
How registration actually happens
Registration is done online, in the new registration area of the GST portal (gst.gov.in), applying as a taxpayer. That names a destination rather than a menu route, deliberately — portal navigation moves, and a walkthrough of menus that have since changed is worse than knowing where you are going. Correct as of August 2026.
What the application will want from you:
- Your state, district, PAN, email and mobile number, verified by OTP on both the email and the phone.
- A Temporary Reference Number (TRN) comes back after OTP verification. It is what you use to resume the application, which matters because most people do not finish it in one sitting.
- Business details: trade name (your practice name or your own name), constitution (proprietorship for most independent professionals), date of commencement, principal place of business.
- Documents: PAN card, Aadhaar, address proof (electricity bill, rent agreement, or property tax receipt for your registered address), bank statement or cancelled cheque, photograph.
- SAC codes for your services. Common codes: 998314 (IT design and development), 998313 (IT consulting and support), 998399 (other professional services not classified elsewhere).
- Signature with DSC (Digital Signature Certificate) or EVC (Electronic Verification Code via Aadhaar OTP).
- A GSTIN follows within seven working days if no clarification is required, or thirty days where Aadhaar authentication is not done or physical verification is ordered. The ARN (Application Reference Number) can be used to track status.
Note the phrase “if no clarification is required”. A proportion of applications come back with the officer asking for something — a clearer address proof, usually — and the application then sits waiting on your reply rather than progressing. That is a normal outcome, not a rejection.
What changes the day you have a GSTIN
The obligations begin immediately, and they are recurring rather than one-off — which is the real cost of registering and the thing worth understanding before you decide to do it voluntarily:
- Charge GST on your domestic invoices. Add 18% GST to your service fee — split as 9% CGST + 9% SGST for intra-state supplies, or 18% IGST for inter-state supplies. Export invoices under an LUT carry no GST.
- File GSTR-1 (outward supplies) by the 13th of the month following the quarter (if under QRMP scheme) or by the 11th of the following month (if monthly filer).
- File GSTR-3B (summary return with tax payment) by the 22nd/24th of the month following the quarter (QRMP) or by the 20th of the following month (monthly).
- File Annual Return (GSTR-9) by December 31 of the following year if your turnover exceeds Rs. 2 crore.
- Maintain records of all invoices, credit/debit notes, and Input Tax Credit claimed.
The compliance burden is real — expect to spend 2-3 hours per quarter on GST filing if you use a tool like HourSlip that auto-generates GSTR-1 data, or significantly more if you are doing it manually. Many freelancers hire a CA for Rs. 1,000-3,000 per quarter to handle filings. Factor this cost into your decision to register voluntarily.
And if a return you filed later turns out not to reconcile with what a client reported about you, that arrives as a scrutiny notice rather than a phone call — how those are answered is worth reading once before you ever receive one.