For seven years this was a genuine choice between ISD and cross-charge, and CBIC had said so in writing. Since 1 April 2025 it is not. If your head office receives third party invoices for services used by more than one GSTIN, the ISD route is the only permitted one.
Pick the speed and depth that matches your need. Same quality, same CA team — only the timeline changes.
Timeline: Monthly, by the 13th
Timeline: 3 working days to register
Timeline: Ongoing, per recipient GSTIN
Government fee — paid by you at actuals
Nil. GST law prescribes no fee for a registration application of any kind, and an ISD registration is obtained through the ordinary FORM GST REG-01 by selecting Input Service Distributor as the reason. The only government-side cost you may incur is a Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate, from ₹499, if you do not already hold one.
Every price above is a professional fee, excluding GST and government charges. 50% on delivery.
All fees and charges listed are indicative only and do not constitute a binding offer. Final amounts may vary depending on the volume of work and the complexity involved.
We look at your registration map and your accounts payable ledger and tell you whether the mechanism applies, and from when. If it does not, we say so, and that is the end of it. A meaningful number of enquiries end here.
We identify which spend heads are genuinely common across registrations, which belong to a single GSTIN exclusively, and which are internal supplies that stay on cross-charge.
Filed through FORM GST REG-01 selecting Input Service Distributor as the reason, with the DSC and authorisation handled. Since 1 November 2025 a low risk application is granted electronically within three working days under Rule 9A.
Registering does nothing on its own. We write to each affected vendor with the ISD GSTIN and effective date, then check the following month’s invoices actually carried it. If your vendors keep billing the operating GSTIN, the ISD has nothing to distribute.
Reconcile GSTR-6A, apply the Rule 39 allocation, raise ISD invoices and file by the 13th, including nil months. Credit available in a month must be distributed in that same month and cannot be parked.
Where the period since 1 April 2025 was handled on cross-charge, we quantify the exposure at branch level and set out the options rather than leaving it unaddressed.
Tell us your requirement, a CA will call you in 30 minutes.
The Finance Act, 2024 amended Sections 2(61) and 20 of the CGST Act, and Notification No. 16/2024 - Central Tax appointed the commencement date. CBIC’s earlier Circular No. 199/11/2023 confirming the route was optional is what most finance teams still remember, and it is why so many groups are confident they are compliant when they are not.
It turns on the structure of your business, not its size. A small company with three state registrations and a centrally purchased software licence is caught. A very large single-state business is not.
If third party common services were cross-charged after 31 March 2025, the prevailing professional view is that the receiving branch is not entitled to that credit, because the route prescribed by Section 20 was not followed. That points to reversal with interest plus penalty exposure under Section 122. The amended provisions have not been tested in litigation yet, so this is the prevailing view rather than a settled outcome.
ISD covers input services a third party billed to one office for use across several registrations. Cross-charge survives only for services one branch genuinely renders to another internally. The test we use: did money leave the group to a third party, and does more than one registration benefit? If yes to both, it is ISD.
The mechanism is limited to input services. Credit on goods and capital goods stays where it arises. The amended definition does bring reverse charge invoices on common input services inside the mechanism.
Credit has to arrive in the ISD registration before it can be distributed, and that depends entirely on how your vendors address their invoices. We treat that instruction as part of the job rather than as your homework, because it is the part that determines whether any of it works.
GSTR-6A only fills once your suppliers have filed GSTR-1, which for monthly filers is the 11th. That leaves roughly one clear working day to reconcile, decide the allocation, raise ISD invoices and file. A group that begins its workings on the 12th will miss, repeatedly.
An unnecessary ISD registration means filing nil GSTR-6 returns indefinitely, and those returns fall under the same three year bar as any other. Saying no is a better outcome than a registration you then have to maintain.
From ₹0 • 5 days
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From ₹999 • Same day
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From ₹4,999 • 5–10 days
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From ₹6,999 • 15–30 days
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From ₹1,999 • 15 working days
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From ₹4,999 • Closed by the 10th
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