How Do You Find Your GST Jurisdiction?

Your GST jurisdiction is the tax office that administers your GSTIN, and every registration has two of them. One is a State jurisdiction, administered by your State or Union territory commercial tax department. The other is a Centre jurisdiction, administered by a CGST Commissionerate under the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. FORM GST REG-01 asks for both at item 4, headed "Jurisdiction", with a State column and a Centre column. Registration itself is State-wise: section 25(1) of the CGST Act requires an application in every State or Union territory in which you are liable.

Which office holds your file decides who issues a notice to you, who processes an amendment, and who you escalate to. Item 4 is one tab inside the wider application, and how GST registration works sets out the rest of it.

FORM GST REG-01 asks for both, and the two use different vocabularies. Item 4 of the form is headed "Jurisdiction" and carries two columns, "State" and "Centre". On the State side the form prints "Sector, Circle, Ward, Unit, etc." and "others": those are alternative names for one single field, not a hierarchy. On the Centre side the portal asks for three separate codes in order: Commissionerate Code, then Division Code, then Range Code. So you complete one State drop-down and three Centre drop-downs, four selections in all.

Ward, Circle and Sector are three State names for the same single field. Commissionerate, Division and Range are three separate Centre fields.

Both drop-downs are filtered by the PIN code you entered for the principal place of business. GSTN's user guide states the rule directly: "The display of the jurisdiction is based on the PIN codes mapped with these jurisdictions." The portal offers a lookup link on the Centre side only, which is why the two sides feel different to fill in even though section 25(1) makes registration State-wise for both.

Use CBIC's own Know Your Jurisdiction tool, which is the only official source for Commissionerate, Division and Range. Open cbic-gst.gov.in, then follow Services > Know Your Jurisdiction. The direct address is https://cbic-gst.gov.in/cbec-portal-ui/?knowYourJuris, and the same link appears on the CBIC-GST portal home screen as "Know your Jurisdiction". Enter the address of your principal place of business and the tool returns the Commissionerate, Division and Range that cover it. Copy those three values into the corresponding drop-downs on the Principal Place of Business tab of FORM GST REG-01.

cbic-gst.gov.in > Services > Know Your Jurisdiction

FORM GST REG-01 links to the same tool from inside the form, and GSTN's guide describes the two screens you will see:

"In case you don't know the Center Jurisdiction, click on the "link" to know about your Center Jurisdiction.""A List of States and Union Territories is displayed. Click on any state/union territory hyperlink to view the List of Jurisdictions specific to that state/union territory."

Screen 1 is titled LIST OF STATES / UNION TERRITORIES and carries a selector bar labelled SELECT THE STATE / UNION TERRITORIES and a Home control. Screen 2 is titled LIST OF JURISDICTIONS, shows a STATE : <name> chip for the State you picked, and returns a table whose columns run Sl No. · ZONE · ZONE CODE · JURISDICTION · ADDRESS · STATE · DISTRICT · PIN · PHONE · FAX · EMAIL. Two of those columns are easy to misread. ZONE CODE is a two-digit code paired to a named zone, and the JURISDICTION cell is prose rather than a code, listing the districts the zone covers.

The Zone is one level above your Commissionerate, and the Zone is the level CBIC Instruction No. 04/2025-GST dated 2 May 2025 uses for grievances: each CGST Zone publicises a grievance email address for applicants whose ARN falls under Central jurisdiction. That grievance address does not come from the EMAIL column of the Know Your Jurisdiction result: the column carries zone administrative addresses, not the grievance email IDs.

Your State jurisdiction comes from the PIN code you enter for the principal place of business, not from a separate lookup. On the Principal Place of Business tab of FORM GST REG-01 the portal filters one drop-down, labelled "Sector/ Circle / Ward/ Charge/ Unit", to the offices mapped to that PIN code. GSTN's user guide states the rule plainly: "The display of the jurisdiction is based on the PIN codes mapped with these jurisdictions." Pick the entry covering your street or locality. If the drop-down shows more than one and you cannot tell them apart, your State or Union territory tax department's website publishes the ward and circle boundaries.

The State itself is not editable at that point. GSTN: "The State cannot be edited in this tab. It is displayed on the basis of the State selected in Part A of the Registration process." There is also no single national ward-and-circle lookup, because the boundaries are published State by State, which is why CBIC's tool covers the Centre side only. Applicants registering in Sikkim get an on-screen tool-tip listing the areas covered by the selected jurisdiction, which GSTN documents for Sikkim alone.

Search the GSTIN on the GST portal, which shows both jurisdictions without a login. Go to www.gst.gov.in > Search Taxpayer > Search by GSTIN/UIN. GSTN's own manual gives the step as: "Click the Search Taxpayer menu available at the GST Portal homepage." Enter the number in the "GSTIN/UIN of the Taxpayer" field, type the captcha in the "Type the characters you see in the image below" field, and click SEARCH. The result carries "Administrative Office" and "Other Office", which is where the assigned Centre and State jurisdictions are displayed.

www.gst.gov.in > Search Taxpayer > Search by GSTIN/UIN

The three labels on that screen are GSTIN/UIN of the Taxpayer, Type the characters you see in the image below and SEARCH.

A registered person can also read the jurisdiction off the certificate. FORM GST REG-06 field 9, Particulars of Approving, prints a Centre column and a State column with Name, Designation and Office, and the certificate's signature block separately prints Jurisdictional Office; what the certificate shows goes through the rest of its fields. The first two digits of the GSTIN itself tell you the State.

The portal renders the same two jurisdictions in two different ways, and which one you see depends only on whether you are logged in. Logged in, on My Profile, the two are separate labelled fields, each rendered as one run-on string:

Pre-login, on a Search Taxpayer result, the same data is line-broken one rung per line, and the labels change to Administrative Office and Other Office with a parenthetical tag on each. That is the difference that makes a reader who checks both screens think they have made a mistake, and they have not.

How the portal shows which administration holds your file

Your registration carries two jurisdictions, and the portal tells you which one actually administers you. On Search Taxpayer, the office holding your file is labelled Administrative Office and the other Other Office, and the tag beside each, (JURISDICTION - CENTER) or (JURISDICTION - STATE), says which administration it is. The tags swap with the taxpayer: a State-administered registration shows Administrative Office (JURISDICTION - STATE). You can also tell them apart by their rungs, because the Centre ladder runs State - CBIC, Zone, Commissionerate, Division, Range, while the State ladder runs State, Zone, then Ward or Sector. On My Profile, the same administration is flagged (Jurisdictional Office). Read the tag: that is the administration your file went to under the GST Council's division of 16 January 2017.

If Administrative Office always meant the Centre, the (JURISDICTION - CENTER) tag beside it would be redundant; the tag exists because the label varies.

The two screens agree with each other, so the check works whichever one you are on: the administration that Search Taxpayer names Administrative Office is the one My Profile flags (Jurisdictional Office). What the tag tells you is the outcome of the 90:10 and 50:50 allotment. If you have arrived here without a GSTIN to hand, the Search Taxpayer result screen is explained in full elsewhere.

No. Administrative control is allotted, not elected, and nothing you enter in FORM GST REG-01 decides it. The GST Council settled the division at its 9th meeting on 16 January 2017: below ₹1.5 crore turnover, 90% of taxpayers go to the State tax administration and 10% to the Central tax administration. Above ₹1.5 crore, control is split 50:50. New registrants are initially divided one each between the Centre and the States, and are re-divided at the end of the year, once their turnover is known, on the same 90:10 or 50:50 basis. The division is done "by computer at the State level based on stratified random sampling" under decision 28(iv), and may take account of geographical location and type of taxpayer.

The division is vertical, so the administration that gets you deals with you for all administrative purposes, which is the single interface the Council was designing. The guidelines were circulated to all States and to CBEC by the GST Council Secretariat as Circular No. 01/2017 dated 20 September 2017, but that circular reproduces only clauses (ii) to (iv) of decision 28 and is silent on new registrants, so the one-each rule is cited to the Minutes of the 9th GST Council meeting and never to the circular. The Council reserved the power to switch the division between the Centre and the States at intervals it decides, under decision 28(vi), and to review the arrangement from time to time, under decision 28(vii).

The split is a GST Council decision executed as an administrative arrangement by the State Level Committees, with no statutory hook of its own. Section 6 of the CGST Act does not give it statutory force. Section 6 does a different job, cross-empowering the administrations so that once a file has been allotted, the officer who issues an order under one Act issues the matching order under the other, under section 6(2)(a), and no parallel proceedings may be started on the same subject matter by the other administration, under section 6(2)(b). Cross-empowerment operates after allotment; it is not the source of it.

You do not have to wonder which side of the 90:10 you landed on. The Search Taxpayer result labels the office holding your file Administrative Office and tags it (JURISDICTION - CENTER) or (JURISDICTION - STATE), as the section above sets out.

The first two digits of a 15-digit GSTIN are the State or Union territory code of the place of registration. A GSTIN beginning 07 is a Delhi registration; 09 is Uttar Pradesh; 27 is Maharashtra; 29 is Karnataka; 33 is Tamil Nadu. The State code is fixed by GSTN's State master and does not change with your address inside the State. Because registration is State-wise under section 25(1) of the CGST Act, a business operating in three States holds three GSTINs with three different opening codes. The full list is below.

State master codes published by the e-Invoice portal, einvoice1.gst.gov.in/Others/MasterCodes (retrieved 24 August 2026).

Code 28 does not appear in GSTN's current State master. Telangana uses 36 and Andhra Pradesh uses 37.

Code 97, Other Territory, covers supplies from the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone. Codes 96 and 99 both read Other Countries in GSTN's master.

The government's own tools do not agree on this. CBIC's Know Your Jurisdiction tool lists the merged Union territory as a single entry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. The GST portal's own GST Law page lists Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu as two separate links, and GSTN's State master keeps codes 25 and 26 separate. Both were checked on 25 August 2026. CBIC's jurisdiction tool has adopted the 2020 merger; the GST portal's law page has not.

Digits 3 to 12 are the PAN, digit 13 is the entity number, digit 14 is Z and digit 15 is a checksum, and digits 3 to 15 are decomposed in full elsewhere.

Changing your principal place of business changes your jurisdiction, and the change is made by amendment, not by re-registration, provided you stay in the same State. Address of the principal place of business is a core field under the first proviso to Rule 19(1) of the CGST Rules. File FORM GST REG-14 within fifteen days of the change; the proper officer approves within fifteen working days of receiving it and issues an order in FORM GST REG-15. The amendment takes effect from the date the change occurred, but only back to the date you filed. Rule 19(1A) provides that no particular stands amended with effect from a date earlier than the date the FORM GST REG-14 was submitted, except by an order of the Commissioner. Moving to a different State needs a fresh registration, because section 25(1) makes registration State-wise.

What counts as proof of the new principal place of business is a separate question from which office then administers it. Amendment is governed throughout by Rule 19, CGST Rules 2017, and the State-wise rule by Section 25, CGST Act 2017.

Circular No. 255/01/2026-GST dated 25 June 2026 settles what happens to work already in progress. Issued by the GST Policy Wing, it answers the three questions a migrating taxpayer has, at its paragraph 7.

• Anything the old office validly did before you moved stays valid, and the new office acts on it as if it had done it itself.
• The old office cannot start anything against you once you have moved; it must pass the issue to the new office.
• If you move while a proceeding is pending, the new office takes it over from the stage it had reached and concludes it, including any appeal.

The principle behind all three is that jurisdiction to exercise a statutory power is assessed as on the date the power is actually invoked, so a later migration does not retrospectively vitiate a proceeding already validly begun. The circular changes nothing about how registration is granted or amended.

No. GST registration is identical in Hyderabad, Noida, Jaipur, Delhi, Lucknow and every other city: the same FORM GST REG-01, the same Government GST Portal, the same CGST Rules, the same ₹0 government fee. Your city changes only two things, and neither is a step in the process. It sets which ward, circle or sector appears in your State drop-down, and which Commissionerate, Division and Range cover your address. There is no city-level GST registration and no city-specific form.

The process itself, wherever you are filing from, is how GST registration works.

The registration process is uniform across States, while the registration threshold, notified Facilitation Centre and jurisdictional boundaries vary. The registration threshold is ₹10 lakh rather than ₹20 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, the only four States that remain "special category States" for section 22, since Explanation (iii) excepts Jammu and Kashmir and then Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. The Facilitation Centre you would physically attend, if the portal flags your application, is the one notified for your jurisdiction. And which ward, circle or sector you fall into is set by your State's own boundaries. The first proviso to Rule 8(4A), which requires biometric verification when the portal flags an applicant, has applied in every State and Union Territory since 10 July 2024, when Notification No. 13/2024-Central Tax rescinded Notification No. 27/2022-Central Tax.

Biometric verification is therefore legally applicable across all States and Union Territories since 10 July 2024, with GSTN's Suvidha Kendra rollout completed in phases through 2024–2025.