In short: Hyderabad is one of the few cities in India where the GST registration threshold is lower than the national norm, where quarterly GSTR-3B is due on the 22nd rather than the 24th, and where a functioning GST Appellate Tribunal bench has existed only since April 2026. This guide covers registration, the 2025-26 filing changes, input tax credit protection and what to do when a GST notice arrives, from CA Murli Chandak, FCA, with 8+ years in practice.
Contents
- Why Hyderabad Businesses Need Specialised GST Support
- GST Registration in Hyderabad: Threshold, Process and GSTIN
- 2025-26 GST Changes at a Glance
- Filing GST Returns: Monthly and Quarterly (QRMP)
- Input Tax Credit: Protecting What You’ve Already Paid For
- E-Way Bills for Moving Goods Within Telangana
- GST Notices, Scrutiny and the New Hyderabad Appeal Route
- GST for Hyderabad’s GCCs, Pharma and IT Businesses
- Documents You’ll Need
- Why Businesses Work With CA Murli Chandak
- Common GST Mistakes Hyderabad Businesses Make
- Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why Hyderabad Businesses Need Specialised GST Support
Hyderabad’s economy runs on a mix that doesn’t fit a generic GST checklist: HITEC City and Gachibowli’s IT and GCC campuses, Genome Valley’s pharmaceutical and life-sciences cluster, and a large base of traders and services businesses across Secunderabad, Begumpet and the older city. Each faces GST differently — a GCC subsidiary billing its foreign parent has different documentation needs than a Basheerbagh trading firm, and a pharma exporter tracking zero-rated supplies has different reconciliation needs than a HITEC City SaaS company invoicing Indian clients.
Telangana also runs a few compliance rules that genuinely differ from the rest of India, and missing them is a common way GST filings go wrong. The most consequential: Telangana never adopted the ₹40 lakh GST registration threshold that most states use for goods suppliers. Under Notification No. 10/2019-Central Tax, Telangana was one of a small group of states specifically excluded from the enhanced limit — so goods suppliers here must register once turnover crosses ₹20 lakh, the same threshold that applies to services, not ₹40 lakh. Businesses that assume the national ₹40 lakh figure applies in Hyderabad often find they were required to register months before they thought they were.
2. GST Registration in Hyderabad: Threshold, Process and GSTIN
Registration is mandatory once your aggregate turnover crosses the applicable threshold, or immediately if you make inter-state supplies, sell through e-commerce platforms, or are otherwise covered under Section 24 of the CGST Act regardless of turnover.
- Goods suppliers: ₹20 lakh (not the ₹40 lakh that most other states use — see above)
- Service providers: ₹20 lakh (same as the rest of India)
- Composition scheme: available up to ₹1.5 crore turnover for eligible goods businesses, with a simpler quarterly return in place of monthly filing
Once registered, Telangana GSTINs carry the state code 36 — useful to check when verifying a vendor’s or client’s registration. Applications are filed through Form GST REG-01, and low-risk applicants with monthly B2B output tax liability up to ₹2.5 lakh can now get an auto-approved GSTIN in as little as 3 working days under CGST Rule 14A (effective 1 November 2025); other applications still follow the standard 7- or 30-day risk-based track depending on Aadhaar authentication and departmental checks.
Getting the registration application right the first time — correct principal place of business documentation, the right HSN/SAC codes, additional places of business declared where relevant — avoids the query-and-resubmission cycle that can delay a GSTIN by weeks.
3. 2025-26 GST Changes at a Glance
GST has moved faster in the last year than at almost any point since 2017. The table below summarises what changed and what it means in practice.
| Change | What It Means for You |
|---|---|
| GST 2.0 rate rationalisation (effective 22 Sep 2025) | Most goods now sit in a simplified two-slab structure; check whether the rate on your HSN codes has changed |
| GSTR-3B auto-population hard-lock | Outward-supply and ITC figures pull from GSTR-1/IMS and can no longer be freely overridden at filing time |
| Invoice Management System (IMS) credit-note rules (Advisory 628, Oct 2025) | Credit notes and ITC reversals are matched at source through IMS, not by manual GSTR-3B adjustment |
| 3-year return filing bar (phased rollout completed Dec 2025) | Returns more than 3 years past their original due date can no longer be filed at all |
| E-invoicing: ₹5 crore mandate, ₹10 crore 30-day rule | E-invoicing applies above ₹5 crore turnover; businesses above ₹10 crore must report each invoice to the IRP within 30 days of the invoice date (effective 1 April 2025) |
| Permanent GSTR-9 exemption up to ₹2 crore turnover | Small taxpayers below this threshold no longer need to file the annual return each year |
4. Filing GST Returns: Monthly and Quarterly (QRMP)
Regular taxpayers file GSTR-1 (outward supplies) and GSTR-3B (summary return and tax payment) either monthly or, if turnover is up to ₹5 crore, quarterly under the QRMP scheme.
- Monthly filers: GSTR-1 by the 11th, GSTR-3B by the 20th of the following month
- QRMP filers: Telangana is a Category X state, so quarterly GSTR-3B is due on the 22nd of the month following the quarter — not the 24th, which applies to Category Y states such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Mixing this up is one of the more common late-fee triggers among businesses that operate in more than one state
- PMT-06 payments: QRMP filers still pay tax monthly for the first two months of each quarter, by the 25th
Since October 2025, the Invoice Management System (IMS) — per GSTN Advisory No. 628 — governs how credit notes and ITC reversals are matched at source, and GSTR-3B’s auto-populated figures are now largely locked against manual overrides — reconciliation has to happen upstream, in GSTR-2B and IMS, not by editing GSTR-3B at filing time. A separate, sharper rule closes the window for old corrections: returns more than three years past their original due date can no longer be filed at all, a bar that reached full effect in a phased rollout through December 2025.
5. Input Tax Credit: Protecting What You’ve Already Paid For
ITC is where most GST disputes originate, and it’s also where money is quietly lost — through vendors who don’t file, mismatches that go unreconciled for months, or credit claimed against invoices that don’t survive a departmental cross-check. With IMS now sitting between your purchase register and your GSTR-3B, a monthly reconciliation discipline isn’t optional anymore: it’s the only way to know before the department does that a credit note or a non-filing vendor has changed your ITC position.
Practical protection looks like: matching GSTR-2B to your books every month rather than at year-end, following up on vendor non-compliance before it becomes your liability under Section 16(2)(c), and keeping the underlying tax invoices, e-way bills and delivery documentation organised well enough to survive a scrutiny notice without a scramble.
Get your GST filings reviewed before the next return is due. A short conversation is often enough to flag ITC leakage, a registration gap, or a filing pattern likely to draw a notice.
6. E-Way Bills for Moving Goods Within Telangana
Telangana follows the standard, central e-way bill threshold rather than an elevated state-specific limit: an e-way bill is required for movement of goods worth more than ₹50,000, whether the movement is within Telangana or across state lines. This is worth flagging specifically because several neighbouring and larger states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi among them — allow intra-state movement up to ₹1,00,000 without one; a Hyderabad business assuming the same higher limit applies locally can end up moving goods without a required e-way bill.
E-way bills are generated on the GST portal in Form GST EWB-01 and remain valid for one day per 200 km of transport distance, with generation now barred for documents older than 180 days and extensions capped at 360 days from original generation.
7. GST Notices, Scrutiny and the New Hyderabad Appeal Route
A GST notice — whether a system-generated ASMT-10 discrepancy notice, a scrutiny notice under Section 61, or a full show-cause notice under Section 73 or 74 — carries a fixed, often short response window, and a weak or late reply narrows your options at every subsequent stage. The right response depends on which section the notice is issued under and what the department is actually alleging, not a generic template reply.
If a dispute proceeds past the first appeal (Section 107, to the Joint/Additional Commissioner (Appeals)), Hyderabad businesses now have a genuine local second-appeal option for the first time since GST began: the GST Appellate Tribunal’s Hyderabad Bench commenced operations on 20 April 2026, sitting from temporary premises at GST Bhavan, LB Stadium Road, Basheerbagh, and covering appeals arising in Telangana. Before this, the only route past the first appellate authority was a writ petition to the Telangana High Court — a slower, more expensive option that many smaller businesses simply didn’t pursue. A functioning Tribunal changes that calculation meaningfully for Hyderabad taxpayers with genuine grounds to contest an order.
8. GST for Hyderabad’s GCCs, Pharma and IT Businesses
Hyderabad’s registered Global Capability Centres now number over 355, employing more than 200,000 professionals — India’s second-largest GCC hub by most industry counts — and state government figures point to roughly 150 new GCCs setting up in the city over a recent 20-month stretch, adding close to 1.5 lakh jobs. For a GCC’s Indian subsidiary, GST intersects constantly with cross-charge and export-of-service questions: intercompany service arrangements with the foreign parent need to be structured and invoiced correctly to support the zero-rating claimed on export invoices, and a poorly documented cross-charge arrangement is a recurring source of departmental queries.
Genome Valley’s 200-plus pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies from 18 countries, and Telangana’s roughly 35% share of India’s pharma/bulk-drug production, bring their own GST patterns — inverted duty structures where inputs are taxed higher than the finished product, export documentation for zero-rated pharma shipments, and job-work movements between manufacturing and testing facilities that each need their own delivery-challan and e-way bill discipline.
For HITEC City and Madhapur’s IT and SaaS businesses, the recurring GST question is usually about place of supply and export-of-service classification on cross-border invoicing — getting this wrong either overpays GST that should have been zero-rated, or under-claims a refund the business was entitled to.
9. Documents You’ll Need
For registration: PAN, proof of business constitution (partnership deed, incorporation certificate, LLP agreement as applicable), proof of principal place of business (electricity bill or rent/lease agreement plus NOC), bank account proof, authorised signatory details and photographs. For ongoing compliance: sales and purchase registers, e-invoices where applicable, e-way bills for goods movement, and bank statements for reconciliation. For a notice response: the notice itself, the underlying transaction documents it references, and any prior correspondence with the department on the same matter.
10. Why Businesses Work With CA Murli Chandak
CA Murli Chandak is a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA) and an IBBI-Registered Valuer (Securities or Financial Assets) with 8+ years in practice, working with businesses across Hyderabad and other cities entirely remotely — GST registration, return filing, notice response and ITC reconciliation don’t require a local office visit, and every engagement is handled with direct access to the CA managing it rather than a rotating team of juniors.
11. Common GST Mistakes Hyderabad Businesses Make
- Assuming the national ₹40 lakh goods threshold applies in Telangana, and registering late as a result
- Filing QRMP GSTR-3B by the 24th instead of Telangana’s Category X due date of the 22nd
- Assuming Telangana’s e-way bill intra-state limit matches Maharashtra’s or Tamil Nadu’s ₹1,00,000, rather than the standard ₹50,000 that actually applies here
- Reconciling GSTR-2B only at year-end instead of monthly, letting ITC mismatches compound
- Treating a GCC’s global cost-sharing arrangement as a substitute for correctly structured, GST-compliant Indian invoicing
- Responding to a scrutiny or show-cause notice with a generic reply instead of one addressed to the specific section and allegation
- Not maintaining job-work delivery challans for inter-unit movement of goods between manufacturing and testing sites
12. Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the GST registration threshold for a business in Hyderabad?
₹20 lakh for both goods and services. Telangana was excluded from the ₹40 lakh enhancement most states received in 2019 under Notification No. 10/2019-Central Tax, so the lower threshold still applies to goods suppliers here.
2. Which GSTIN state code applies to Telangana?
36.
3. When is quarterly GSTR-3B due for a Hyderabad business on QRMP?
The 22nd of the month following the quarter — Telangana is a Category X state.
4. What is the e-way bill threshold for moving goods within Telangana?
₹50,000, the standard central threshold. Telangana has not opted for a higher intra-state limit the way Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu have.
5. Is there now a GST Appellate Tribunal bench in Hyderabad?
Yes. It commenced operations on 20 April 2026 at GST Bhavan, Basheerbagh, and hears appeals arising in Telangana.
6. How does GST apply to a Hyderabad GCC’s cross-charge to its foreign parent?
It needs to be structured and invoiced correctly as an export of service to support zero-rating — poorly documented cross-charge arrangements are a recurring source of departmental queries.
7. What happens if I miss a GSTR-3B filing deadline?
A late fee (₹50/day where there is a tax liability, ₹20/day for nil returns, both capped by turnover slab) plus 18% per annum interest on the unpaid tax.
8. Can I still file a GST return more than three years overdue?
No. The three-year filing bar closed that window in a phased rollout that reached full effect by December 2025.
9. Do I need to visit a Hyderabad office to work with CA Murli Chandak?
No. Engagements — registration, return filing, notice response and reconciliation — are handled remotely.
10. What should I do if I receive a GST scrutiny notice?
Respond within the stated window, addressed to the specific section and the specific allegation. Don’t ignore it, and don’t file a generic reply — the response shapes every subsequent stage if the matter isn’t resolved at that level.
This article reflects GST law and Telangana-specific rules in force as of 31 August 2026. GST rules, rates and thresholds change frequently — please verify current requirements before relying on this for a specific filing or transaction.
Have a GST registration, filing or notice question specific to your Hyderabad business?
CA Murli Chandak – FCA | IBBI-Registered Valuer (Securities or Financial Assets) | IBBI/RV/07/2021/14408
Website: murlichandak.com
Phone: +91 99985 39902
Email: murlichandak@murlichandak.com
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