How Do You Apply for GST Registration in India?

GST registration is the online process of obtaining a 15-digit GSTIN through the Government GST Portal at gst.gov.in. Registration is compulsory once aggregate turnover crosses ₹40 lakh for goods, ₹20 lakh for services, or ₹10 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Apply in Form GST REG-01 under Services > Registration > New Registration: Part A generates a TRN and Part B carries the documents. Registration is granted within three working days under Rule 9A or Rule 14A, seven working days under Rule 9(1), or thirty days after physical verification. The government fee for GST registration is ₹0. Section 25(1) of the CGST Act requires an application within 30 days of becoming liable to register.

GST registration is the process by which a business enrols under the Goods and Services Tax and receives a 15-digit GSTIN. The application is Form GST REG-01, filed on the Government GST Portal at gst.gov.in. A GSTIN lets a business issue a tax invoice showing GST separately, collect that GST from customers, and claim input tax credit on its own purchases. An unregistered business can do none of those three things, which is why GST-registered buyers routinely ask for a GSTIN before they sign. The number is PAN-linked and State-specific: one GSTIN per State a business supplies from, all built on the same PAN.

Within the fifteen characters, the State code, the PAN, the entity number, the letter Z and a checksum each carry a fixed meaning. That is why a GSTIN can be read back to the business it belongs to.

The positional breakdown, character by character, is at what the 15 digits of your GSTIN mean.

GST registration is compulsory once aggregate turnover in a financial year crosses ₹40 lakh for a supplier of goods exclusively, ₹20 lakh for a supplier of services (and for anyone supplying both), or ₹10 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Section 24 of the CGST Act overrides those figures entirely: it lists thirteen clauses, and the categories in them must register from their first transaction whatever their turnover, including persons making any inter-State taxable supply (section 24(i) reads "persons making any inter-State taxable supply", and is not confined to goods), e-commerce sellers, persons liable under reverse charge, casual taxable persons, non-resident taxable persons, input service distributors, agents of a supplier, and TDS/TCS deductors. Aggregate turnover is computed on PAN, not per GSTIN, so every branch and vertical counts toward the same limit.

The full statutory chain behind each of those figures is set out at GST registration turnover limit.

The ₹40 lakh limit applies only where the supplier supplies goods exclusively. One consulting fee invoiced alongside a product sale takes the business out of that exemption altogether and pulls the whole turnover down to the ₹20 lakh limit.

Marketplace sellers and individuals meet registration requirements of their own: GST registration for e-commerce sellers works through the section 24 marketplace trigger, and GST registration for individuals covers the freelancer and salaried-person branches.

Six documents cover every GST registration application: PAN, an identity and address proof, a passport-size photograph, proof of business constitution, proof of the place of business, and proof of a bank account. PAN is the anchor of the whole application, because the GSTIN is constructed on it. Only the constitution proof changes by entity type: a partnership deed for a firm, a certificate of incorporation with MOA and AOA for a company, an LLP agreement for an LLP, nothing at all for a proprietor. Bank proof may be furnished after the GSTIN is granted, under Rule 10A, rather than at the point of application.

The entity-wise breakdown, one document at a time, is at documents required for GST registration. That page also sets out the file format and size specifications the portal enforces on each upload.

Registering for GST online takes ten steps on the Government GST Portal, from Services > Registration > New Registration to the Application Reference Number. The application is Form GST REG-01 and is filed in two parts. Part A captures PAN, legal business name, email and mobile, and returns a 15-digit Temporary Reference Number. Part B, opened with that TRN, carries ten tabs of business detail and the document uploads. Nothing is filed on paper and nothing is payable to the government at any step.

1. Open the New Registration page: Visit gst.gov.in and click Services > Registration > New Registration.
2. Fill Part A: Select "Taxpayer" in the I am a list, then enter PAN, legal business name, email and mobile.
3. Verify both OTPs: Enter the mobile OTP and the email OTP; each is valid for 10 minutes only.
4. Save your TRN: The portal issues a 15-digit Temporary Reference Number, valid for 15 days.
5. Open Part B with the TRN: Return to New Registration, select Temporary Reference Number (TRN), and work through the ten tabs.
6. State your reason to obtain registration: Choose the correct entry in the Business Details section of PART B.
7. Add your places of business: Enter the principal place of business, any additional places, and the bank account.
8. Choose Aadhaar authentication: Select Yes or No on the Aadhaar Authentication tab; the portal decides whether biometric verification follows.
9. Sign and submit: Click SUBMIT WITH DSC, SUBMIT WITH E-SIGNATURE or SUBMIT WITH EVC on the Verification tab.
10. Track the ARN: An Application Reference Number arrives within 15 minutes; approval issues in Form GST REG-06.

The registration screen carries a language selector, and it currently offers only English; there is no Hindi option in the registration flow.

On step 4. The 15-day life of the Temporary Reference Number (TRN) is a portal housekeeping rule: if Part B is not submitted inside those 15 days, the TRN and everything entered against it are purged, and the applicant starts the application again from Part A. Those fifteen days are not the fifteen days in Rule 8(4A), which fixes the deemed date of submission for an application where Aadhaar authentication has been opted for.

On step 8. Whether an application goes to plain OTP Aadhaar authentication or to biometric-based Aadhaar authentication, photograph and original-document verification at a notified Facilitation Centre is decided by the common portal itself, "based on data analysis and risk parameters", under the first proviso to Rule 8(4A). Those parameters are not published by CBIC or GSTN, so any list of reasons an application gets flagged is speculation.

On step 2, for a partnership firm. The procedure for a partnership firm is the same ten steps in the same order; only the constitution proof in the document upload changes, to the partnership deed.

Most applications that stall do so at step 3, on an OTP that does not arrive; the fix for that and for the other recurring failures is at GST portal errors. Once the Application Reference Number (ARN) issues at step 10, the application can be followed to its outcome at GST registration status.

GST registration is granted within three working days where the common portal identifies the applicant as low-risk under Rule 9A, and within three working days where the applicant opts into Rule 14A. An ordinary application goes instead to a proper officer, who has seven working days from the date of submission under Rule 9(1). An application routed to physical verification of the place of business gets thirty days (days, not working days) under the proviso to Rule 9(1). Rule 9A and Rule 14A are two different routes, not one three-day scheme: Rule 9A is automatic, risk-based and uncapped, and Rule 14A is opt-in and capped at ₹2,50,000 per month of output tax on supplies made to registered persons, including compensation cess.

Which route a given application takes, and what happens on each one, is worked through at how long GST registration takes.

Where the officer is not satisfied and issues a notice for clarification in Form GST REG-03, the reply in Form GST REG-04 is due within seven working days of the notice, and approval follows within seven working days of the clarification; the drafting of that reply is covered at reply to Form GST REG-03.

There is no 21-working-day period anywhere in the current registration rules, and no three-working-day deemed approval either: the 21-day and three-working-day deemed approval figures still circulating in 2026 coverage are pre-22.12.2020 law, replaced by Notification No. 94/2020-Central Tax dated 22 December 2020.

The government fee for GST registration is ₹0. No charge is payable to the Centre or to any State for filing Form GST REG-01, for Aadhaar authentication, or for the certificate in Form GST REG-06. Cost arises from only two sources: a Digital Signature Certificate, which a company or an LLP must have to sign the application, and the professional fee of whoever files it. A casual taxable person faces a third item, but it is not a fee: section 27(2) requires an advance deposit of the estimated tax liability for the registration period before registration is granted.

The authority for the Digital Signature Certificate requirement is Instruction 7 to Form GST REG-01, which names the seven constitutions that must sign with a DSC.

What professional help costs turns on the compliance that follows the GSTIN rather than on the application itself, and those drivers are worked through at GST registration fees.

Section 25(1) of the CGST Act requires an application within 30 days of the date on which a person becomes liable to register. Applying inside that window makes the registration effective from the date the liability arose, so input tax credit runs from that date. Applying late does not move the date the liability arose; it moves the effective date of registration to the date registration is granted, and the input tax credit on purchases made in between is lost permanently. A casual taxable person or a non-resident taxable person must apply at least five days before starting business, under the first proviso to section 25(1).

Tax on supplies made during the unregistered period stays payable, because liability arose on the day the threshold was crossed and registration has nothing to do with it. The credit on inputs bought during that same period does not come back.

The effective date itself is fixed by Rule 10(2) and Rule 10(3) of the CGST Rules, not by section 25(3). Apply within thirty days of becoming liable and registration is effective from the date liability arose; apply after thirty days and it is effective only from the date of the grant of registration. Voluntary registration under section 25(3) therefore takes effect from the date of grant in every case, because there is no liability date to fall back to.

Failing to obtain registration when liable is an offence under section 122(1)(xi) of the CGST Act, 2017. The penalty is fixed by the closing words of section 122(1): ₹10,000 or an amount equivalent to the tax evaded, whichever is higher. An equal penalty arises under the corresponding State GST Act.

The ten per cent figure comes from section 122(2)(a), read with section 73(9), and the hundred per cent figure from section 122(2)(b). Section 122(2) opens by addressing any registered person who supplies goods or services on which tax has not been paid, has been short-paid or has been erroneously refunded, or where input tax credit has been wrongly availed or utilised, and clauses (a) and (b) take their subject from those opening words. On that opening, neither clause reaches a person who never registered at all. That reading is an inference from the opening words of section 122(2) rather than a decided holding.

The tax itself does not go away: the department can assess and demand GST on every supply made since the date registration became mandatory, with interest under section 50, currently 18% per annum, running from the original due date to the date of payment. The penalty and the interest are cumulative, not alternatives.

A business a few weeks over the threshold, with little or no tax evaded, meets the ₹10,000 floor and stops there. A business that has traded unregistered for a year faces a penalty equal to the whole of the tax it should have collected, plus interest under section 50 on that tax, paid out of a margin that never carried GST in the first place.

In Motaleb Bhuyan v. The State of Assam, decided on 11 March 2025, the Gauhati High Court names clause (xi) as the clause that penalises a person liable to be registered who fails to obtain registration, and holds that the penalty does not displace the officer's own power to register such a person under section 25(8) read with Rule 16. In Govind Enterprises v. State of U.P., decided on 30 May 2019, the Allahabad High Court reproduces section 122(1) through clause (xxi) followed by the single closing sentence that supplies the quantum for every one of those clauses.

Three obligations start on the day the GSTIN is granted. Rule 10A requires the bank account details to be furnished on the portal within 30 days of the grant of registration, or before the first GSTR-1 is filed, whichever is earlier. Miss it and the GSTIN is suspended, which blocks return filing and invoicing, but the suspension is not worked by Rule 10A itself. Rule 21A(2A)(b) is the operative provision: where "there is a contravention of the provisions of rule 10A by the registered person, the registration of such person shall be suspended", with intimation in Form GST REG-31. Rule 21(d) supplies the underlying cancellation ground: registration is liable to be cancelled if the person "violates the provision of rule 10A". Rule 18 requires the registration certificate in Form GST REG-06 to be displayed at the principal place of business and at every additional place, and the GSTIN to be shown on the name board. The first GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B then fall due on the ordinary cycle, whether or not any supply was made.

The certificate Rule 18 requires you to display is downloaded from the portal itself, and the route to it is at GST registration certificate. A registered person with no turnover in a month still files, and a nil return is still a return. The bank account furnished under Rule 10A must be held on the same PAN as the registration.

Voluntary registration under section 25(3) is worth it when the input tax credit you start claiming exceeds the compliance cost you take on. A business below the threshold buying ₹5,00,000 of taxable inputs a year at 18% is forgoing ₹90,000 of credit by staying unregistered. The cost against that credit is monthly GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B filing from the date of registration, due whether or not there is turnover in the month. Voluntary registration also brings in B2B customers, who cannot claim credit on an unregistered supplier's invoice and often will not contract without a GSTIN. It is not a switch you flip back: exit is a separate cancellation application under section 29.

Illustration only. The input figures are assumed, not statutory.

Founders also register early for reasons the arithmetic does not capture. A clean registration and filing history from an early date is one of the first things a buyer, a lender or an investor checks in diligence, and a late start date is a question the founder then has to answer.

GST registration turns on four things that are closed to an unregistered business. Input tax credit is the largest: GST paid on purchases is set off against GST collected on sales, so tax attaches only to the value the business adds. A GSTIN allows a valid tax invoice, which is what a B2B customer needs to claim their own credit, and is the practical reason larger clients ask for it before signing. Registration is a precondition for selling through Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho, and for bidding on most government tenders. It also permits export without paying IGST upfront, once a Letter of Undertaking in Form GST RFD-11 is filed.

Choose regular registration if your customers are businesses that need input tax credit; choose the composition scheme only if you sell to end consumers and value simplicity over credit. Section 10(1) of the CGST Act itself sets the composition limit at ₹50 lakh of aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year; the ₹1.5 crore figure businesses actually work to for goods (₹75 lakh in specified States) is notified, not statutory: it comes from a notification under the first proviso to section 10(1), which lets the Government "increase the said limit of fifty lakh rupees to such higher amount, not exceeding one crore and fifty lakh rupees, as may be recommended by the Council". A separate option under section 10(2A) covers service providers up to ₹50 lakh. The rates are 1% for traders and manufacturers, 5% for restaurants and 6% under the section 10(2A) service option. A composition dealer cannot claim input tax credit, cannot show GST on the invoice, and cannot make inter-state supplies, which rules the scheme out for almost every B2B or online business.

The composition option is elected at registration, in Form GST REG-01, and not afterwards by default. Casual taxable persons, non-resident taxable persons, input service distributors and the other categories that carry their own form and their own section are set out at types of GST registration.

All three are possible, and each has its own REG form. An amendment to core fields (legal name, principal place of business, or the addition or removal of a partner, director or authorised signatory) is filed in Form GST REG-14 and needs officer approval; non-core fields update on the portal without it. Voluntary cancellation or surrender is Form GST REG-16, filed after all pending returns are cleared. The department can cancel on its own motion under section 29, which begins with a show-cause notice in Form GST REG-17. A cancelled registration is revived by applying for revocation in Form GST REG-21.

Rule 23(1) allows that revocation application within 90 days of the date of service of the cancellation order, extendable by the Commissioner, or an officer authorised by him not below the rank of Additional Commissioner or Joint Commissioner, by a further period not exceeding 180 days. The 30-day figure that most published coverage still carries was section 30(1)'s own period, and it was removed with effect from 01.10.2023 by the Finance Act, 2023.

The second proviso to Rule 23(1) applies only "if the registration has been cancelled for the failure of the registered person to furnish returns": in that case no revocation application may be filed unless those returns are furnished and any amount due as tax in terms of them is paid, along with any interest, penalty and late fee. Where the cancellation was on some other ground, that bar does not apply. Separately, and this is an obligation after revocation rather than a condition of applying for it, the third proviso requires all returns due from the date of the cancellation order to the date of the revocation order to be furnished within thirty days of the revocation order.

The full register of REG forms, each against the section and rule that creates it, is at sections and rules governing GST registration.

No. The GST registration process is identical in every State and Union territory: the same Form GST REG-01, the same Government GST Portal, the same Rules 8, 9, 9A and 14A. The registration threshold is ₹10 lakh instead of ₹20 lakh in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, and the Facilitation Centre you would physically attend, if the portal flags your application, is the one notified for your jurisdiction. Biometric verification itself is not state-varying in law: the proviso to Rule 8(4A) has applied across all States and Union Territories since 10 July 2024, when Notification No. 13/2024-Central Tax rescinded Notification No. 27/2022-Central Tax.

Which Facilitation Centre and which office your own application falls to is a question of GST jurisdiction, and it can be settled before you file. GSTN's Suvidha Kendra rollout was switched on State by State and completed in phases through 2024–2025. A business supplying from more than one State takes a separate registration in each, on the same PAN.

1. Four statutory routes. Registration is granted in three working days under Rule 9A or Rule 14A, seven working days under Rule 9(1), or thirty days after physical verification under the proviso to that rule.
2. The government fee is ₹0. No charge is payable to the Centre or to any State for the application, for Aadhaar authentication or for the certificate. Cost arises only through a Digital Signature Certificate and professional help.
3. Thirty days to apply. Section 25(1) gives you 30 days from becoming liable. Apply later and Rule 10(3) moves the effective date to the date of grant, and the credit in between is gone for good.
4. A ₹10,000 penalty floor. Failing to register when liable is an offence under section 122(1)(xi), penalised at ₹10,000 or the tax evaded, whichever is higher, with interest at 18% per annum under section 50 on top.
5. Bank details within 30 days. Rule 10A requires them within 30 days of grant or before the first GSTR-1, whichever is earlier; a breach suspends the GSTIN under Rule 21A(2A)(b).