GST Consultant in Delhi: GST Registration, Return Filing, ITC and Notice Support by CA Murli Chandak, FCA

In short: If you run a business in Delhi, GST touches almost everything you do – registration, monthly or quarterly returns, input tax credit, e-invoicing and, sooner or later, a notice or scrutiny query. Delhi’s economy is overwhelmingly services-led (over 85% of the city’s Gross State Value Added), so most Delhi businesses are consultants, IT and electronics traders, professional firms, D2C brands and small exporters rather than heavy manufacturers – and their GST needs look different from a factory-led compliance calendar. This guide covers Delhi-specific registration thresholds, the 2025-26 GST changes that affect every filer, return due dates (including Delhi’s QRMP category), the higher e-way bill threshold Delhi allows, and how to handle a notice before it becomes a bigger problem. CA Murli Chandak, FCA, has advised on GST and valuation matters for over 8 years and works with Delhi businesses on a direct-access basis.

Contents

1. GST Registration in Delhi: Thresholds, Documents and Timelines
2. Delhi’s Business Landscape: A Services-First GST Base
3. The 2025-26 GST Changes Every Delhi Business Should Know
4. GST Returns and Deadlines for Delhi Taxpayers
5. Input Tax Credit: Claiming, Protecting and Reconciling It
6. E-Invoicing and E-Way Bill Rules for Delhi Businesses
7. Composition Scheme: Is It Right for a Delhi Small Business?
8. GST Notices and How to Respond
9. GST Audits, Assessments and Appeals
10. Common GST Mistakes We See in Delhi Businesses
11. Why Businesses Work With CA Murli Chandak for GST in Delhi
12. Frequently Asked Questions

1. GST Registration in Delhi: Thresholds, Documents and Timelines

Delhi is a normal-category Union Territory for GST purposes, not one of the special category states, so the standard registration thresholds under Section 22 of the CGST Act apply: aggregate turnover exceeding Rs 40 lakh for a business supplying goods, and Rs 20 lakh for a business supplying services (or a mix that is predominantly services). Section 24 lists categories that must register regardless of turnover – inter-state suppliers, e-commerce operators and sellers, casual taxable persons, and businesses required to deduct or collect tax at source, among others. Every Delhi GSTIN carries the state code 07 as its first two digits.

To register, a Delhi business should have ready:

• PAN of the business and of promoters, partners or directors
• Proof of the principal place of business – ownership document, rent or lease agreement, or a no-objection certificate from the property owner
• Bank account details, with a cancelled cheque or bank statement
• Digital signature (mandatory for companies and LLPs) or Aadhaar-based e-KYC for other constitution types, including biometric authentication at a GST Suvidha Kendra where the system flags it under Rule 8(4A) of the CGST Rules
• Constitution documents – certificate of incorporation, partnership deed, or the equivalent for the entity type

Registration is typically processed within 7 working days where Aadhaar authentication is successful and no risk flags are raised; applications routed for physical verification can take up to 30 days. Since 1 November 2025, eligible low-risk applicants can opt into the simplified scheme under Rule 14A of the CGST Rules and get an auto-approved GSTIN in 3 working days – available where monthly output tax liability on B2B supplies does not exceed Rs 2.5 lakh and Aadhaar authentication is completed, which covers a large share of Delhi’s smaller consultants, service providers and Nehru Place traders. Getting the principal place of business documentation right the first time avoids the most common cause of delay. Registration is usually just the starting point – most Delhi businesses also need ongoing bookkeeping and return support once they are live; see our accounts outsourcing services for how that works.

2. Delhi’s Business Landscape: A Services-First GST Base

Delhi does not have a single dominant industrial cluster in the way some other cities do. Its economy is overwhelmingly services-driven – the tertiary sector accounts for over 85% of Delhi’s Gross State Value Added, spanning information technology, consulting, financial and professional services, media and hospitality, with per-capita income running well above the national average. This shapes what GST compliance actually looks like for most Delhi businesses.

A few examples of how this plays out on the ground:

• Nehru Place, in South Delhi, is one of India’s largest concentrations of IT hardware, electronics and computer-related dealers, alongside a growing base of IT services and repair businesses – a mix of goods and services supply that needs careful HSN/SAC classification and, for dealers selling nationally, correct place-of-supply treatment.
• Okhla Industrial Area, also in South Delhi, houses around 1,200 industrial units spanning electronics and electrical goods, engineering goods, garments and export-oriented manufacturing, including a number of export houses – a segment where zero-rated supply and refund mechanics matter as much as standard domestic compliance.
• Connaught Place and the wider central business district host a dense concentration of consulting, legal, financial and corporate advisory firms – businesses whose GST profile is almost entirely services-based, with place-of-supply questions arising whenever a client is billed outside Delhi.

For most Delhi businesses, this means GST work skews toward correct services classification, input tax credit on a largely services-heavy cost base, e-commerce and D2C compliance, and export/refund mechanics for the city’s manufacturing and trading pockets – rather than the industrial-cluster compliance calendars common to manufacturing-heavy cities.

3. The 2025-26 GST Changes Every Delhi Business Should Know

Several structural changes to the GST system came into effect through 2025-26 and apply uniformly across every state, including Delhi. Getting these wrong is now one of the most common sources of notices and blocked credit.

Change	What it means	Effective
GST 2.0 rate rationalisation	Most goods and services now sit at 5% or 18%; a 40% demerit rate applies to a defined list of goods; individual life and health insurance is exempt	22 Sep 2025
GSTR-3B hard-lock	Auto-populated liability in GSTR-3B is non-editable; corrections flow through GSTR-1A before filing 3B, or the next GSTR-1/IFF	From Jul 2025 tax period
Invoice Management System (IMS)	Credit notes can be kept pending for one tax period (one quarter for QRMP filers) before ITC reversal is adjusted to the amount actually availed (see GSTN Advisory 628)	From Oct 2025 period (Advisory 628)
3-year return filing bar	Returns more than 3 years past their due date are permanently blocked from filing on the portal, across GSTR-1/1A/3B/4/5/5A/6/7/8/9/9C	Phased rollout, live from 1 Dec 2025
E-invoicing threshold and window	Mandatory once AATO crosses Rs 5 crore (PAN-level); a 30-day IRP reporting window applies once AATO reaches Rs 10 crore, with older documents rejected	Threshold: FY 2025-26 crossing covered from 1 Apr 2026; 30-day window: from 1 Apr 2025 for AATO ≥ Rs 10 crore
GSTR-9 exemption made permanent	Businesses with aggregate turnover up to Rs 2 crore are permanently exempt from filing the annual return	From FY 2024-25 (Notification 15/2025-CT)
Simplified registration (Rule 14A)	Optional 3-working-day auto-approved GST registration for low-risk applicants with monthly B2B output tax liability up to Rs 2.5 lakh, subject to Aadhaar authentication	From 1 Nov 2025

None of these changes are Delhi-specific, but Delhi’s high concentration of services and trading businesses – many operating close to the e-invoicing and QRMP thresholds – makes tracking them closely worthwhile.

4. GST Returns and Deadlines for Delhi Taxpayers

Delhi businesses follow the standard national return architecture, with one Delhi-specific detail that trips up businesses used to a different state’s calendar:

• GSTR-1 – outward supply details, due on the 11th of the following month for monthly filers, or the 13th for QRMP filers (via IFF for the first two months of the quarter)
• GSTR-3B – summary return and tax payment, due on the 20th of the following month for monthly filers with turnover above Rs 5 crore. QRMP filers with turnover up to Rs 5 crore file quarterly, and Delhi falls in Category Y (List B), so the due date is the 24th of the month after the quarter – not the 22nd that applies to Category X states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat or Karnataka. Tax for the first two months of the quarter is still paid monthly via Form PMT-06, due on the 25th.
• GSTR-9 / 9C – annual return and reconciliation statement, due 31 December following the financial year; GSTR-9C applies above Rs 5 crore turnover, and the Rs 2 crore GSTR-9 exemption is now permanent

The 24th-versus-22nd distinction matters most for businesses that operate GSTINs in both Delhi and a Category X state – a common pattern for Delhi head offices with a branch or warehouse elsewhere – since a single shared compliance calendar across GSTINs will get one of the two dates wrong if it is not built state-by-state. Current due dates for every return type are always worth checking directly on the GST portal before filing, since extensions are issued from time to time.

5. Input Tax Credit: Claiming, Protecting and Reconciling It

Input tax credit under Section 16 remains conditional on the supplier having actually filed their return and paid the tax, which in practice means credit now lives or dies on GSTR-2B. Rule 36(4) read with the Invoice Management System requires monthly reconciliation of what you have claimed against what your suppliers have actually reported – not an annual clean-up exercise. For Delhi’s largely services-heavy businesses, this typically means reconciling ITC on rent, professional fees, IT and software costs and other overheads, alongside goods-side credit for the city’s trading and manufacturing pockets.

A practical monthly discipline looks like this: review GSTR-2B as soon as it auto-generates on the 14th; flag missing or mismatched supplier invoices before filing GSTR-3B rather than after; and, since the October 2025 IMS changes, actively decide on pending credit notes each period rather than letting them sit – an unactioned credit note now triggers an automatic ITC reversal if left too long.

6. E-Invoicing and E-Way Bill Rules for Delhi Businesses

E-invoicing becomes mandatory once a business crosses Rs 5 crore aggregate annual turnover (PAN-level, across all GSTINs) – a threshold now covered from 1 April 2026 for anyone who crossed it during FY 2025-26. Once turnover reaches Rs 10 crore, a 30-day reporting window applies: invoices not reported to the IRP within 30 days of their invoice date are rejected outright and cannot be issued as valid tax invoices. This has been in force since 1 April 2025 and remains a frequent source of blocked input credit for the recipient when a supplier misses the window.

On e-way bills, Delhi is one of a small group of states – alongside Maharashtra, Bihar, Punjab and a few others – that allows a higher intra-state threshold of Rs 1,00,000, rather than the default Rs 50,000 that applies to most states. This is a genuine practical relief for Delhi’s Nehru Place and Okhla trading and distribution businesses moving goods within the city, but it does not extend to inter-state movement: a consignment worth Rs 80,000 moved within Delhi needs no e-way bill, but the same consignment moved to Gurugram or Noida crosses the standard Rs 50,000 inter-state threshold and needs one.

7. Composition Scheme: Is It Right for a Delhi Small Business?

The composition scheme under Section 10 of the CGST Act is available to businesses with aggregate turnover up to Rs 1.5 crore (Delhi, as a normal-category Union Territory, does not fall under the lower Rs 75 lakh limit that applies to the eight special category states). Composition taxpayers pay a flat rate on turnover instead of the standard rate structure, file quarterly via Form CMP-08 instead of monthly, but forgo input tax credit and cannot make inter-state outward supplies.

That last condition is the one that most often rules Delhi small businesses out in practice. A Nehru Place electronics dealer or an Okhla exporter selling primarily to customers outside Delhi – which describes a large share of businesses in both markets – is not eligible for composition regardless of how comfortably their turnover sits under Rs 1.5 crore. The scheme suits a genuinely local, Delhi-only customer base far better than it suits a business trading nationally from a Delhi address, so eligibility needs to be checked against actual supply patterns before opting in, not turnover alone.

8. GST Notices and How to Respond

Return scrutiny under Section 61 typically begins with a Form ASMT-10 notice flagging a specific discrepancy – a mismatch between GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, or between claimed ITC and GSTR-2B, being the most common triggers. Before a formal show cause notice is issued, taxpayers may also receive a pre-notice intimation under Rule 142(1A) in Form DRC-01A, which sets out the department’s view and gives an opportunity to pay or respond before matters escalate. Where the department proceeds, a formal show cause notice under Section 73 (non-fraud cases) or Section 74 (fraud, suppression or wilful misstatement) is issued in Form DRC-01, culminating in an order in Form DRC-07 if the matter is not resolved.

The practical point across all of these: a notice has a fixed response window, and silence is treated as an admission by default. Even a routine ASMT-10 query deserves a written, documented reply within the time given – not because every notice is serious, but because an unanswered one very quickly becomes one.

9. GST Audits, Assessments and Appeals

Departmental audit under Section 65 requires 15 days’ advance notice and is generally completed within 3 months, extendable to 6. Special audit under Section 66, ordered where the assessing officer considers the case needs external scrutiny, is carried out by a nominated Chartered Accountant or Cost Accountant within 90 days, extendable to 180. Where an order goes against the taxpayer, an appeal lies first under Section 107 to the Appellate Authority, and – for matters within its jurisdiction – subsequently to the GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) under Section 112.

For Delhi taxpayers specifically, ITC mismatches flowing from unreconciled GSTR-2B positions and place-of-supply disputes on services billed outside Delhi form two of the more recurring categories of scrutiny, alongside the standard national patterns around late filing and classification disputes.

10. Common GST Mistakes We See in Delhi Businesses

A few patterns recur often enough to be worth flagging directly:

• Assuming composition eligibility on turnover alone, without checking whether the business actually makes inter-state supplies – common among Nehru Place and Okhla businesses trading nationally
• Applying the wrong e-way bill threshold – using Delhi’s Rs 1,00,000 intra-state limit for a consignment that has actually crossed into Haryana or Uttar Pradesh, where the standard Rs 50,000 inter-state threshold applies
• Getting the QRMP due date wrong for a business also registered in a Category X state, by applying one calendar across GSTINs registered in different due-date categories
• Letting IMS credit notes sit unactioned, triggering an automatic ITC reversal that a timely decision would have avoided
• Place-of-supply errors on services billed to clients outside Delhi – charging CGST plus SGST where IGST was actually due, based on where the work was performed rather than the recipient’s registered address
• Missing the 30-day e-invoice reporting window, which rejects the invoice outright rather than merely delaying it, and blocks the recipient’s input credit
• Not responding to an ASMT-10 or DRC-01A within the window, on the assumption that a routine query does not need a formal reply

11. Why Businesses Work With CA Murli Chandak for GST in Delhi

A few facts, rather than claims, that Delhi clients have generally found useful in deciding who to work with:

• 8+ years in practice across GST, valuation and broader financial advisory work
• FCA (Fellow Chartered Accountant) and an IBBI-Registered Valuer (Securities or Financial Assets, IBBI/RV/07/2021/14408), so valuation-adjacent GST questions – on transactions, restructuring or related-party pricing – can be handled without bringing in a second advisor
• Direct access – queries are handled personally rather than routed through a large team of juniors
• Remote-delivery model – the practice is based in Ahmedabad and serves Delhi businesses remotely; there is no local Delhi office, and that is stated here rather than implied otherwise

12. Frequently Asked Questions

12.1 What is the GST registration threshold for a business in Delhi?

Rs 40 lakh aggregate turnover for a business supplying goods, and Rs 20 lakh for a business supplying services, under Section 22 of the CGST Act. Delhi is a normal-category Union Territory, so the lower thresholds that apply to the eight special category states do not apply here.

12.2 What is the GSTR-3B due date for a QRMP filer registered in Delhi?

The 24th of the month following the quarter. Delhi falls in Category Y (List B) for QRMP purposes, unlike states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat or Karnataka, which fall in Category X and file by the 22nd.

12.3 What is Delhi’s e-way bill threshold for goods moved within the city?

Rs 1,00,000 for intra-state movement, higher than the Rs 50,000 default that applies in most states. The standard Rs 50,000 threshold still applies once goods move out of Delhi into another state.

12.4 Can a small trader in Delhi opt for the GST composition scheme?

Only if aggregate turnover is within Rs 1.5 crore and the business does not make inter-state outward supplies. A large share of Delhi’s trading businesses, particularly in Nehru Place and Okhla, sell nationally, which rules out composition regardless of turnover.

12.5 What happens if I miss the 3-year GST return filing deadline?

Since the phased rollout completed on 1 December 2025, the GST portal permanently blocks filing of any return more than 3 years past its original due date, across GSTR-1, 3B, 4, 5, 5A, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 9C. There is no facility on the portal to file after this bar applies, which makes staying current far more important than it once was.

12.6 Do I need to respond to every GST notice, even a routine query?

Yes. A Form ASMT-10 scrutiny notice or a Form DRC-01A pre-notice intimation may look routine, but an unanswered notice within the stated window is generally treated as an admission and can escalate into a formal show cause proceeding under Section 73 or 74.

12.7 Is e-invoicing mandatory for my Delhi business?

It becomes mandatory once your aggregate annual turnover (across all GSTINs on the same PAN) crosses Rs 5 crore, with FY 2025-26 crossings covered from 1 April 2026. Above Rs 10 crore turnover, invoices must additionally be reported to the IRP within 30 days of the invoice date or they are rejected.

12.8 How long does GST registration take in Delhi?

Typically 7 working days where Aadhaar authentication succeeds and no risk flags are raised, extending to 30 days where the application is routed for physical verification of the principal place of business. Since 1 November 2025, eligible low-risk applicants with monthly B2B output tax liability up to Rs 2.5 lakh can opt into the Rule 14A simplified scheme for a 3-working-day auto-approved GSTIN.

12.9 Do you need to be based in Delhi to help with my GST compliance?

No. GST registration, returns, reconciliation, advisory and notice response work is handled remotely for clients across India, including Delhi, without requiring an in-person Delhi office.

12.10 What is the penalty for late GST return filing?

A late fee of Rs 50 per day (Rs 25 CGST + Rs 25 SGST) applies to GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B with a tax liability, capped at Rs 2,000 for turnover up to Rs 1.5 crore, Rs 5,000 for Rs 1.5-5 crore, and Rs 10,000 above Rs 5 crore; nil returns attract Rs 20 per day, capped at Rs 500. Interest at 18% per annum applies separately, computed daily on any tax paid after the due date, and cannot be settled using input tax credit.

For related reading, see the guides on Virtual CFO services in Delhi NCR, Registered Valuer services in Delhi, and ESOP consulting for Delhi and NCR startups, or the full list of services.

This article reflects the law and GST portal rules as understood as of 19 August 2026. GST law, rates and portal functionality change frequently; please confirm the current position for your specific facts before relying on this for a filing or compliance decision.