India GST Invoice Template

What Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs requires on the document

12 things have to appear before this counts as a tax invoice in India. The one people miss most often is the title itself — the document must carry the words “Tax invoice”, not “Invoice”.

• The words “Tax invoice”
• Your legal name, address and 15-digit GSTIN
• A unique invoice number, within 16 characters and never repeated in a financial year
• The invoice date
• The recipient's name, address and GSTIN, if they are registered
• The place of supply, for any invoice to a different state
• The HSN or SAC code for each line
• A description of each item, with quantity and unit price
• The taxable value and the GST rate applied
• CGST and SGST shown as separate lines for a same-state supply, or IGST for a different-state supply
• The total amount payable, including GST
• The signature of the supplier or an authorised representative

Verified against Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs on 2026-10-12.

Same rate, two different lines: CGST+SGST or IGST

GST is one tax with two possible shapes on the invoice, and which shape applies depends on the place of supply, not on where your business is registered.

• Supply within the same state: split the rate into CGST and SGST, each half the total rate, as two separate lines.
• Supply to a different state: show the full rate once, as IGST — never split it.
• For services, place of supply generally follows the recipient's registered address, not where the work was performed.
• A buyer claiming input tax credit needs the tax shown under the correct head. The total can be arithmetically right and the invoice still wrong if CGST/SGST was charged on an inter-state supply.

This is the single most common Indian invoicing error, and it is invisible until the buyer's accountant tries to reconcile the credit.

GST 2.0: the slabs changed on 22 September 2025

The 56th GST Council collapsed the old four-slab system into a simpler one, so a template still showing 12% or 28% is now out of date.

• The 12% and 28% slabs no longer exist. Most goods that sat at 12% moved to 5%; most that sat at 28% moved to 18%.
• 18% is now the standard rate for most goods and services, including professional and consulting services.
• 5% covers common goods — packaged food, personal care items, economy transport — and some previously-12% items.
• A new 40% rate replaced 28% specifically for demerit and luxury goods (large vehicles, aerated drinks, tobacco-adjacent products), not for ordinary invoicing.

The exact rate for a specific product or service is decided by its HSN/SAC classification, not by this summary — check the official rate schedule for anything outside standard professional services.

GST registration and the value thresholds

The rules below only bite past a certain amount, which is what makes them easy to miss — an invoice that was fine last month becomes non-compliant the first time it crosses the line.

• GST registration is compulsory once aggregate turnover crosses ₹20 lakh for services or ₹40 lakh for goods in most states — special category states have lower limits, so check yours on the GST portal.
• HSN codes need 4 digits up to ₹5 crore aggregate turnover, and 6 digits above it.
• Above ₹5 crore aggregate turnover (across every GSTIN under the same PAN, in any financial year since 2017-18), every B2B invoice must carry a government-issued Invoice Reference Number and QR code from the e-invoice portal — once this applies it keeps applying even if turnover later drops. This tool does not generate an IRN or QR code, so a business over this threshold needs e-invoicing software in addition to a template; a PDF without one is not a valid tax invoice for that supplier, and the buyer cannot claim input tax credit on it.