GST for YouTubers and Influencers in India

As a youtuber or influencer, you need to register for GST once your total billings for the year cross ₹20 lakh. Below that you do not need to bother with GST. Above it, what you charge depends on who is paying you.

Work for an Indian brand is taxed at 18%. Money from foreign clients counts as an export, taxed at zero, as long as you have filed an LUT and invoiced it correctly. The rest of this guide goes stream by stream, so you know what to charge on each.

When do you need GST registration?

The figure that decides whether you need GST registration or not is your aggregate turnover for the year. Not your profit, and not what lands in your bank after deductions.

Add up AdSense, brand deals, sponsorships, affiliate commission (Indian and foreign), course sales, digital products, merchandise, taxable barter, exports, and everything else.

Under Section 22 of the CGST Act, the registration limit for a service provider is ₹20 lakh in a financial year. In Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura it drops to ₹10 lakh. Once you cross the limit, you have 30 days to register (Section 25).

A common worry is that billing a client in another state or country forces you to register straight away. It doesn't, as long as your turnover is still under the limit. Turnover is the only test. A handful of other rules can require registration on their own. These never apply to youtubers and influencers.

Let’s take the example of Riya, a creator in Mumbai. She earns ₹9 lakh from AdSense, ₹8 lakh from Indian brand deals, and ₹4 lakh from affiliate programs, which comes to ₹21 lakh in all. AdSense and foreign affiliate income both count toward the limit, so she has to register for GST.

Is GST applicable on AdSense income?

AdSense is always an export for Indian creators, and exports are taxed at zero. This is because your contract is always with Google's foreign company.

Under Section 2(6) of the IGST Act, AdSense counts as an export of services when all five of these are true:

1. You are in India.
2. The customer is outside India.
3. The place of supply is outside India.
4. You are paid in foreign exchange, or in rupees where RBI rules allow it.
5. You and the customer are not two offices of the same person.

When all five are true, AdSense is a zero-rated supply under Section 16 of the IGST Act. It still counts toward your ₹20 lakh limit for compulsory registration. Once you are registered and have filed an LUT, you raise an export invoice and charge no IGST.

Should you charge GST on Indian brand sponsorships?

Once you are registered, work for an Indian brand attracts 18% GST. That covers paid reels, videos, content creation, product placement, campaign production, and usage rights. All of it is advertising service under SAC 998361.

Advertising vs sponsorship: The reverse-charge point

First, let me clarify a common misconception here. You may have heard that if you are an individual and the brand is a company, reverse charge kicks in and the brand pays the GST for you. For ordinary ad work, that is simply false. You make a paid reel, you are registered, you charge 18%.

Reverse charge is only applicable to sponsorship services under SAC 998397, meaning a brand putting its name on your event or series, not content you produce as an advertisement. And even that rule shifted recently. From 16 January 2025, under Notification No. 07/2025-Central Tax (Rate):

• Sponsorship provided by a body corporate (a company or LLP) moved to forward charge. The supplier charges the GST like any other service
• Reverse charge is now applicable only where someone who is not a body corporate, an individual or an ordinary firm, provides sponsorship service to a company or partnership firm. There, the recipient pays

Your registration does not change this. If you are an individual giving genuine sponsorship to a company or partnership firm, the recipient pays the GST under reverse charge and you do not add it to your invoice, registered or not.

When you are registered, you mark the invoice "tax payable under reverse charge" and still report the supply in your returns.

A contract that calls itself a "sponsorship" doesn't make it one. What matters is what you actually did. Content produced for a brand is advertising, and it is 18%. Sponsorship is when a brand pays to be associated with something that's yours, in return for visibility.

What a GST invoice needs

Your tax invoice needs all of the following:

• Your name, address and GSTIN
• The invoice number and date
• The brand's name, address and GSTIN, where they are registered
• A description of the work and its SAC code
• The taxable value, GST rate and GST amount
• Place of supply and state
• The CGST/SGST or IGST split

Two additions only when they apply: a reverse-charge note where reverse charge genuinely applies, and the LUT declaration on an export invoice.

Gross billing vs net receipt

GST is applicable on the value of your services. TDS and platform commission do not reduce it. On a ₹1,00,000 fee, GST at 18% is ₹18,000, and even a ₹10,000 TDS deduction leaves that ₹18,000 exactly where it was.

If a brand owes you the full fee and an agent skims commission on top, GST still sits on the full fee. The one exception is when the platform itself is your customer and the agreed fee is already the net figure. Then the GST can be on the net amount.

GST on foreign brand deals and international sponsorships

A foreign brand deal is an export taxed at zero, but only when the whole checklist under Section 2(6) of the IGST Act is ticked:

1. You are in India.
2. The foreign brand named in the contract is your customer.
3. That brand pays you.
4. The place of supply is outside India.
5. Payment comes in foreign exchange, or RBI-permitted rupees.
6. You and the brand are not two branches of one business.

If you meet the whole checklist as a registered creator with an LUT, no GST is applicable on the invoice. If even one condition fails, it reverts to standard advertising work at 18% IGST.

Is there GST on affiliate income?

Indian affiliate programs

When you earn commission from an Indian merchant or affiliate network, that is a normal domestic service, so once you are registered you charge 18% GST on the commission.

If the network is in your own state, that splits into 9% CGST and 9% SGST. If it is in another state, you charge 18% IGST instead. Raise the invoice on the party named in your affiliate agreement, and work out the GST on the commission you are actually owed, after cancellations and refunds are taken off, but before TDS.

Say a network approves ₹50,000 of commission and deducts ₹5,000 TDS. Your GST is on ₹50,000, not the ₹45,000 you receive. And you charge nothing on the value of products people buy through your link, only on your commission.

Foreign affiliate programs

Foreign affiliate income is another zero-rated export when the export conditions are met, with the same LUT-and-invoice routine. Report it in your GST returns even though the tax is zero.

Before you treat it as an export, be clear on four things: who owes the commission, what you did under the agreement, where the place of supply is, and how you got paid. A foreign dashboard and a payout in dollars are not proof on their own.

Watch the intermediary trap too. GST can hold you as an "intermediary" under Section 2(13) of the IGST Act, meaning someone merely arranging a supply between two other parties, and that costs you export status and lands you at 18%.

But CBIC's own guidance (Circular No. 159/15/2021-GST) is clear that an intermediary needs three parties and two separate supplies. If you provide the main service on your own account, you are not one. Keep your agreements clear on that point.

GST on gifted products and barter collaborations

Product in exchange for content

A phone, some clothes, or a cosmetics haul handed over in return for a reel or review is not a gift. You have supplied an advertising service and it is taxable.

Suppose you normally charge ₹30,000 for a reel, and a brand sends a phone worth ₹30,000 instead of cash for one. Your service is still worth ₹30,000, so GST at 18% is ₹5,400. If both of you are GST-registered, each side raises its own invoice. Yours for the content, theirs for the phone.

A product handed over for a promised post is taxable payment. You charge 18% GST on the value of your service, regardless of what the brand calls the deal.

Retained vs returned products

If you keep the product, it counts as payment, and GST applies to the market value of the product. If you return it, the position can change, but you will want a contract review covering use, risk, return terms, and whether you still owe any content before assuming you are clear.

Any cash fee or other reward you took home alongside the product still forms part of the payment.

PR packages and sponsored travel

A PR package with no post attached is not a service you have supplied at all.

The moment a reel, story, review, or mention is required, the same package becomes payment for content, and now it is a barter collaboration.

Sponsored flights, hotels, meals, event tickets, and experiences work the same way when coverage is expected of you. Once registered, you charge 18% on the value of experience.

What GST rate applies to creator income?

The rate follows what you are actually selling:

The last two confuse people. After the September 2025 GST rate changes, e-books are taxed at 18% like other digital content, and only printed books remain exempt, so PDFs, templates, and downloads all sit at 18%.

And merchandise follows the HSN rate of the goods themselves, so a printed t-shirt, a cosmetic, a snack box might not have 18% GST rate. So, do not apply the 18% service rate on physical products without checking.

If you bundle goods and services together, you are into composite-supply or mixed-supply territory.

How does LUT work for creators?

LUT stands for Letter of Undertaking. Under Rule 96A of the CGST Rules you file LUT in Form GST RFD-11, and you can then export your services without paying IGST at the invoice stage and struggling for a refund later.

You still issue an export invoice and still report the income in your tax returns.

As a GST registered youtuber or Influencer, you should always file LUT before the beginning of the financial year. No Exceptions.

Can you claim input tax credit?

Once you are registered, yes, you can recover the GST you paid on business purchases, under Section 16 of the CGST Act. That is money most creators never bother to claim. You need a valid GST invoice, proof you received the goods or service, records showing business use, and your returns filed on time.

The usual candidates are cameras, lenses, mics and lights, laptops and editing gear, editing software and cloud storage, studio rent and business internet, and your agency, accounting and legal fees. Anything you bought for personal use is out.

Also, if you are only working with foreign platforms and clients, you cannot benefit from the GST paid on capital goods. Capital goods are your purchase with an expected useful life of more than 1 year. The Indian government does not allow refund of GST paid on purchase of capital goods.

What records should you keep?

Under Section 36 of the CGST Act, hold on to your GST records for at least 72 months from the due date of the annual return (December after the financial year ends).

1. Your income records: Contracts, briefs, purchase orders, invoices, credit notes, AdSense statements, affiliate reports, bank statements, TDS records, and GST returns.

2. Your export and LUT records: The LUT receipt, export invoices, foreign customer details, contracts, bank advice, remittance records, FIRC or FIRA where issued, and an invoice-wise tracker for your FEMA deadlines.

3. Your expense records: Vendor GST invoices, payment proof, GSTR-2B checks, asset records, business-use records, and any ITC reversal records.

Stay compliant with the GST rules

Take each income stream on its own terms. Track your turnover so you know when it is about to cross ₹20 lakh, work out who your customer actually is, and be clear about what the work is.

A paid reel is advertising, whatever the contract calls it.

File an LUT for your genuine exports, charge 18% on your work for Indian brands, and keep six years of records behind all of it.

Not sure how this applies to your income as a creator? Remote Munshi works only with freelancers and creators earning from Indian and foreign clients, and handles the LUT, GST returns, and the ITR that goes with them. Talk to us and get clarity on your GST situation.