Are you a taxable person under GST?

A taxable person is a person who carries on any business at any place in India. Anybody who supplies goods and/or services and is registered (or required to be) under GST Act is a taxable person.

The term includes an individual, HUF, company, firm, LLP, Government company, foreign companies, co-operatives, local authority, government, trust etc.

Who has to get registered?

Any business whose turnover in a financial year exceeds Rs 20 lakhs (Rs 10 lakhs for North-Eastern and hill states).

[Note: If your turnover is supply of only exempted goods/services, i.e., they are exempt under GST, then this clause does not apply.]

Other Cases [GST registration is mandatory irrespective of turnover]

• Every person who is registered under Excise, VAT, Service Tax etc will have to be registered under GST too
• When a business which is registered has been transferred to someone/demerged, the transferee shall take registration from date of transfer
• Anyone who makes inter-state sales
• Casual taxable person (see below)
• Non-Resident taxable person
• Agents of a supplier
• Those paying tax under reverse charge mechanism (where the buyer pays the GST instead of the normal seller)
• Input service distributor (see below)
• E-commerce operator or aggregator (online shopping sites)
• Person who supplies via e-commerce aggregator (e.g., registered sellers on Amazon, Flipkart etc.)
• Person supplying online information and database access or retrieval services from outside India to a person in India, other than a registered taxable person

Who is a casual taxable person?

A person occasionally supplying goods/services in a taxable territory where he does not have a fixed place of business.

Example: A person who has place of business in Bangalore supplies taxable consulting services in Pune where he has no place of business would be treated as casual taxable person in Pune.

Who is a non-resident taxable person?

A person outside India occasionally supplying goods/services in India and he does not have a fixed place of business in India.

Who is an input service distributor?

Input Service Distributor means a head office of the supplier of goods/services which receives input services. The ISD distributes the credit of GST paid on the services to its branch with same PAN.

Thus, only credit on ‘input services’ can be distributed and not on input goods or capital goods. However, this facility is optional in nature.

Who is an e-commerce operator?

E-commerce has been identified as “Supply of goods and/or services including digital products over digital or electronic network”. Simply put, an e-commerce operator (e.g., Flipkart & Amazon) is every person who owns/operates a online website to supply goods and services.

Under the GST regime, e-commerce players are mandatorily required to deduct tax the rate of 1% of net value of taxable supplies. This is “Tax Collection at Source (TCS)” under the GST law and has to be deposited with the government.

Registration

Every person has to apply for registration in every State in which he is liable within thirty days Registration number in GST will be PAN based and hence, having PAN would be a prerequisite for obtaining registration. The assessee must obtain separate registration for each State, as registration under GST will be state-wise.

Special registration for casual taxable person and non-resident taxable person Casual/non-resident taxable personmay obtain a temporary registration for a period of 90 days. He will be required to make advance deposit of GST (based on his estimated tax liability).

Collection of GST

Only a registered taxable person can collect GST. The taxable person must show the GST amount prominently on their tax invoices.

Returns

A normal taxpayer will be required to file three monthly returns and one annual return.

(The article has been written by Archit Gupta, Founder & CEO ClearTax.com)