If you sell products online from India, GST touches three things: whether you must register, what your invoices must show, and how your store handles tax at checkout. Most of the trouble we see comes from treating these as one job. They are three.
This post covers what the sources we checked say, and where you should ask an accountant. We are a web development team, not tax advisers, and GST rules change. Treat this as a starting list of questions, not advice.
1. Do you have to register?
The general rule is that you register once your yearly turnover crosses a limit. One guide from Compliance Calendar says that for sellers of goods only, the limit can go up to Rs 40 lakh, and otherwise it is generally Rs 20 lakh, with lower limits in some states. Turnover is counted across all businesses under the same PAN.
Selling through a marketplace used to change this. Under Section 24, sellers using an e-commerce operator could be forced to register whatever their turnover. The same guide says that from 1 October 2023 (Notification 34/2023, Central Tax), small goods sellers can sell through such operators without registering if they meet conditions. They must be under the threshold, sell only within their own state or union territory, hold a PAN and get an enrolment number.
Two things follow for you:
- If you ship to customers in other states, the guide says you generally need regular registration.
- If you sell only through your own website, not a marketplace, the marketplace rule above is not the one that applies to you. Your turnover threshold and your state limit are what matter, so ask your accountant which applies.
We could not confirm the current limits for Maharashtra from the sources we found. Check with your CA.
2. What must your invoice show?
A June 2026 guide from Tally Solutions, citing Rule 46 of the CGST Rules 2017, lists the fields on a tax invoice. The main ones are:
- Your name, address and 15-digit GSTIN
- A unique invoice number and the invoice date
- The customer’s name and address, and their GSTIN if they are registered
- Place of supply (state)
- HSN code for goods, or SAC code for services
- Description, quantity and unit for goods
- Taxable value, tax rate, and the tax amount split into CGST, SGST or IGST
- Shipping address if it differs from billing
- Whether reverse charge applies, and a signature or digital signature
The same page says to show any discount given before the supply. It does not say how many digits the HSN code needs. That depends on your turnover, so confirm it with your accountant.
3. What this means for your website
This is where it becomes a web question. If your store cannot capture and print the fields above, you will be fixing invoices by hand.
Questions to ask your developer:
- Does each product have a field for its HSN code and a tax rate?
- Does checkout collect the customer’s state, so the right tax (CGST and SGST, or IGST) is applied?
- Can it collect a customer’s GSTIN when they are a business?
- Does the invoice number run in a single unbroken sequence?
- Can the shop produce a PDF invoice with all the fields above?
Shopify and WooCommerce can both be set up for this, but how much works out of the box depends on the plugin or app you choose. Our comparison covers costs and GST handling for both: Shopify vs WooCommerce for your Pune online store.
What we could not verify
We did not find a clear source on whether GST has to be displayed on the product page itself, or whether prices must be shown tax-inclusive. If this matters to you, ask your CA. We would rather say so than guess.
Next step
If you are planning a store, or fixing one that cannot produce proper invoices, talk to the Liftup team. We will go through the checklist above with you and your accountant.
Sources: Tally Solutions, GST invoice format and mandatory fields (June 2026) and Compliance Calendar, GST registration for e-commerce sellers (undated; most recent change it mentions is 2024). GST rules change, so confirm with a qualified professional.