Does your Shopify store need to register for GST in India?

Which GST registration threshold applies to your Shopify store?

This page covers registration for the GST you charge. The GST Shopify adds to its own fees is a separate question: it stops on invoices issued after you add your GSTIN under Settings > Billing.

CBIC — GST Concept & Status (as on 1 April 2019), Notification 10/2019-Central Tax, and section 22 of the CGST Act in the CBIC tax repository, all read October 3, 2026.

For a goods-only seller, CBIC's GST Concept & Status paper sets the line in aggregate turnover per financial year:

Notification 10/2019-Central Tax carves a short list out of that relief: ice cream, pan masala and tobacco, joined from 1 April 2022 by certain fly-ash, building-brick and roofing-tile lines, stay on Rs 20 lakh even in a 40-lakh state. Apparel, cosmetics and electronics are not on it.

Those thresholds are measured in aggregate turnover, not your admin's Total sales; what that figure counts and leaves out has its own page.

Who registers in India regardless of turnover?

Section 24 of the CGST Act lists thirteen categories of person who must register whatever their turnover. Three of them reach a Shopify merchant: persons making any inter-State taxable supply, non-resident taxable persons, and persons supplying through an e-commerce operator required to collect tax at source under section 52. Your own Shopify store is not that third: it needs no TCS.

The first is the trap: a store well under Rs 40 lakh that ships goods to a buyer in a neighbouring state has no threshold to stand on. Section 24 does not limit the inter-State clause to goods, so a service crossing a state line is inside its words.

A notification then exempts suppliers of inter-State taxable services under Rs 20 lakh from registering — ten lakh in the four special category States that section 22 keeps, named below. For goods no such exemption exists at any turnover.

The marketplace clause has narrowed for goods: selling them through an operator that collects tax at source is still its own ground for registration, but since 1 October 2023 a supplier whose turnover this year and last stays under Rs 20 lakh (Rs 10 lakh in the four states, not Rs 40 lakh) who sells goods inside one state only, makes no inter-State supply of goods and holds a GST portal enrolment number is exempt.

A parallel notification exempts service suppliers under the same limits who supply through such an operator, with services taxed under section 9(5) left out.

A seller with no presence in India falls under the non-resident entry: a clause, not a threshold. The mirror-image question for Australia has its own page.

Why you will see Rs 20 lakh quoted instead

Section 22 of the CGST Act still makes a supplier liable above twenty lakh rupees, or ten lakh from a special category State; the Rs 40 lakh goods-only relief came by notification.

Two different lists of states sit behind these thresholds, and merging them is the costliest mistake here. Section 22 starts from the eleven states the Constitution names and takes seven of them back out — Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarakhand — which leaves Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura as its special category States.

CBIC puts its Rs 10 lakh services line on those same four states. The second list is the 40-lakh notification for goods, which leaves out the ten states CBIC names above.

CBIC's paper puts goods in all ten on Rs 20 lakh, but section 22 sets ten lakh for goods or services from the four, and no notification raising it turned up in our October 3, 2026 search — so a goods seller there plans on Rs 10 lakh.

Shopify's India GST help page summarises registration as turnover above Rs 20 lakh, or Rs 10 lakh for North Eastern and hill states — a phrase absent from the Act. For a goods-only seller it understates the threshold in force.

Trade press ahead of the 56th GST Council meeting described a proposal to lift the limits to Rs 50 lakh for services and Rs 1 crore for goods. No official page we read on October 3, 2026 — the CBIC repository for sections 22 and 24, the CBIC GST Concept & Status paper, the GST Council site and Shopify's help page — documents an adopted increase.

What Shopify does — and does not do — once you register

Shopify's India GST settings arrive with the rates filled in:

Shopify puts the accuracy of those rates on you (check with local tax authorities or a tax professional) and adds that it does not create a GST-compliant bill.

Nor does registration hand the paperwork over: Shopify helps automate the calculation but does not remit or file your taxes; the GST you collected shows in Shopify's Taxes report.

So the sequence is yours: confirm your line, register through the GST portal or a practitioner in your state, then review every rate in the admin before the next order lands.