GST follows your client, not your address
GST is a tax on a supply, and for services the question is where the recipient sits, not where you sit. Sort your clients: who is outside India, who is inside.
Supplying services to a client outside India, paid in foreign currency, is generally treated as an export of services, outside the domestic GST burden. Supplying services to a recipient in India can fall within India's GST net, where registration and charging questions arise.
| Your client | Broad GST direction |
|---|---|
| Outside India, paid in forex | Generally export of services, zero-rated |
| In India | Can be taxable in India, registration may apply |
Place-of-supply has specific rules and exceptions, and the nature of the service matters. A CA confirms the position against your actual contracts before anyone registers or files anything.
Export of services is zero-rated, but only if you do it right
When your work qualifies as an export of services, GST law treats it as a zero-rated supply under the IGST Act. Zero-rated is not the same as exempt: the supply is taxable at a zero rate, letting the exporter avoid the tax cost while staying inside the system.
In practice this is done by filing a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) so you can export without paying IGST up front. The alternative, pay IGST and claim it back as a refund, ties up cash, making the LUT route cleaner for a regular service exporter. It requires registration and filing the undertaking correctly; it is not automatic.
The conditions matter: the supplier and recipient must be distinct, the place of supply must be outside India, and payment generally has to be received in convertible foreign exchange. A CA checks those conditions against your contracts before you rely on zero-rating.
Online services to India have their own rulebook (OIDAR)
If what you sell is delivered over the internet with little or no human intervention, platform access, downloadable templates, an automated tool, hosted software. It can fall under OIDAR (online information and database access or retrieval services). OIDAR has its own place-of-supply and registration treatment because the supplier and user can sit in different countries while the service crosses borders invisibly.
For an overseas supplier providing such services to recipients in India, whether a registration obligation arises depends on who the Indian recipients are and how the service is delivered.
If your work is straightforward professional advisory billed to named clients, OIDAR usually isn't your world. If you run a paid app, subscription tool or self-serve digital product with Indian users, raise it specifically, automated digital products and live human-delivered advisory are not treated the same way.
Getting the money home: the income-tax and NRO side
Separate from GST is what happens to the income itself. Fees for services connected with India are India-source income, and as an NRI you are taxable in India on income arising here, so even where GST is a non-issue, the income-tax question can still apply.
Fees from an Indian client are typically received into an NRO account, and the payer may deduct TDS. That TDS is not a final cost. It is credited against your actual tax, and where a DTAA applies between India and your country of residence, it can reduce the rate or shift where the income is finally taxed. The practical work is matching what was deducted to what is due, claiming any treaty benefit, and filing so nothing is taxed twice.
The GST treatment governs whether you charge or register; the income-tax treatment governs what you owe and what comes back. If you're weighing incorporating instead of staying a freelancer, setting up a private limited company changes this picture (limited liability, easier fundraising, different tax and compliance load), so it's worth comparing the two before you scale rather than after.
A worked example: a designer in Dubai with mixed clients
Karthik lives in Dubai and freelances as a brand designer. Two clients in the UAE and Europe, one startup in Bengaluru. The Bengaluru client has asked for a GST number.
His UAE and European work is supplied to recipients outside India, paid in foreign currency, pointing to export of services, zero-rated, run under a LUT so no IGST is paid up front. The Bengaluru engagement is a supply to a recipient in India, so that is the piece where GST registration and charging need to be assessed.
On the income side, the Bengaluru fees are India-source. They go into Karthik's NRO account; the client may deduct TDS. Because India and the UAE have a tax treaty, his CA checks how the income is finally taxed and whether any TDS is refundable. The outcome: foreign work kept outside India's GST burden, the Indian engagement handled correctly, income reported once in the right place.