GST is the tax creators panic about earliest and understand least. The good news up front: for most people reading this, the answer to "do I need to charge GST?" is not yet, and the day it changes is a date you can see coming. So let us clear the fog.
One thing trips up almost everyone first. GST and the tax the brand already deducted are two different animals. That 10% the brand held back is income-tax TDS, a prepayment of your income tax that comes back to you at filing. GST is a separate tax you may have to add on top of your fee and pass to the government. One does not cancel the other.
The one number that decides everything: ₹20 lakh
You are only required to register for GST once your aggregate turnover in a financial year crosses ₹20 lakh for services (₹10 lakh if you operate from one of the special-category states in the North East and the hills). Below that line, you are not required to register, and you do not add GST to your invoices. A creator earning ₹8 lakh a year from brand deals simply does not touch GST at all.
What actually counts toward the ₹20 lakh
Aggregate turnover is the whole financial year, across every brand, counted gross, before any TDS. It is not per brand and not per platform. A few things people miss:
- Barter counts. If a brand gave you ₹40,000 of product for a campaign, that value is part of your turnover.
- Money from foreign brands counts too, even though, as you will see, you usually charge no GST on it.
- It is the financial year total, April to March, not a rolling twelve months.
What happens the day you cross it
You register (it is free, on the GST portal), you get a GSTIN, and from then on your invoices carry 18% GST on your fee: split as CGST plus SGST when the brand is in your own state, or a single IGST line when they are in another state. That 18% is collected from the brand and passed to the government; it is not carved out of your earnings, as long as you invoice it correctly. You also start filing returns, which is where a CA or a clean tool earns its keep.
A quick picture. You quote a brand ₹1,00,000 for a campaign. Once you are GST-registered, the invoice reads ₹1,00,000 plus ₹18,000 GST, ₹1,18,000 in total. The brand pays the ₹1,18,000 (less any TDS on the base), you keep your ₹1,00,000, and the ₹18,000 is the government's, held by you until you file. Nothing about your own take-home changed; a line was added that flows straight through you.
Foreign brands: usually zero, not eighteen
Work for a brand based outside India is generally an export of services, which is zero-rated: you charge no IGST, provided the usual conditions hold (the recipient is abroad and you are paid in convertible foreign currency, among others). To do this cleanly without blocking your cash, you file a one-time LUT (Letter of Undertaking) for the year, then raise zero-rated export invoices under it. It is a real advantage, and worth setting up properly rather than charging 18% to a US brand by mistake.
The parts where a CA genuinely earns the fee
A few corners are genuinely subtle, and this is where you ask a professional rather than a blog: whether to register voluntarily before you must (it lets you claim input credit on your own business spends, but adds monthly compliance), how reverse charge works on some services you buy from abroad, and how agency structures change who invoices whom. None of that is a reason to fear GST. It is a reason to keep clean books so the answers are quick.
The habit that makes all of this painless
Watch the running total. The scramble only ever happens to creators who did not notice they were approaching ₹20 lakh until a CA mentioned it in July. If you always know your year-to-date receipts, crossing the line becomes a calm, scheduled task instead of a surprise with a penalty attached.
One trap: never charge GST before you are registered
It is worth saying plainly, because creators get this backwards. You cannot add an 18% GST line to an invoice until you actually hold a GSTIN. Collecting a tax you are not registered to collect is its own problem. So while you are below the threshold, your invoice is simply your fee, with no GST line, and that is correct and complete. The flip side is just as firm: the day you are required to register, adding the line stops being optional, and in practice a brand's finance team will often ask for your GSTIN before they release payment anyway.
After you register, the work is monthly, not yearly
The part that catches people out is the rhythm. GST is not a once-a-year event like your income-tax return; it is a monthly and quarterly cycle of returns, and you file on schedule even in a month where you raised no invoices at all. A missed return carries its own late fee, which grows by the day. None of this is a reason to fear registering when you must. It is a reason to have a system, or a CA on call, ready before you cross ₹20 lakh rather than scrambling to set one up the month after.
That is exactly what the Creator Kamai money cockpit does: it tracks your receipts for the financial year and keeps an eye on the GST threshold for you, so you get a nudge as you approach it, not a shock after. When the day comes, your invoices are already GST-correct, with exports handled under LUT. This is information for creators in India, not tax advice; your CA makes the final call on your registration.