GST follows your client, not your address
The instinct is to ask "do I, as an NRI, have to pay GST?" — but GST is a tax on a supply, and the question it really asks is where that supply takes place. For services, that depends largely on where the recipient is. So the more useful starting point is to sort your clients into who sits inside India and who sits outside it.
Where you supply services to a client outside India and the payment comes in foreign currency, that supply is generally treated as an export of services — and exports are kept out of the domestic tax burden. Where your client is in India, the supply can fall within India's GST net, and that is 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 |
This is the broad direction, not a ruling on your situation — place-of-supply has specific rules and exceptions, and the nature of the service matters. The point is that the answer is driven by the facts of who you serve and how you are paid, which is exactly what a CA pins down before anyone files or registers 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 or "nothing to do": it means the supply is taxable at a zero rate, which lets the exporter stay outside the tax cost while still being inside the system.
In practice that is usually done by filing a Letter of Undertaking (a LUT) so you can export the services without paying IGST up front. The alternative is to pay IGST and claim it back as a refund, which ties up cash. The LUT route is the cleaner one for a regular service exporter, but it depends on being registered and filing the undertaking correctly — it is not automatic.
What trips people up is assuming export treatment applies just because the client is foreign. The conditions matter: the supplier and recipient have to be distinct, the place of supply has to be outside India, and the payment generally has to be received in convertible foreign exchange. A CA checks those conditions against your actual contracts and bank credits before relying on zero-rating, so you are not exposed if any limb is missing.
Online services to India have their own rulebook (OIDAR)
If what you sell is delivered over the internet with little or no human intervention — access to a platform, downloadable templates, an automated tool, hosted software — it can fall under OIDAR, which stands for online information and database access or retrieval services. OIDAR has its own place-of-supply and registration treatment precisely because the supplier and the user can sit in different countries and the service crosses the border invisibly.
This matters when an overseas supplier provides such services to recipients in India. The rules here are more involved than for ordinary one-to-one consulting, and whether a registration obligation arises depends on who the Indian recipients are and how the service is delivered. It is a fact-specific area, so the honest answer for most freelancers is that it needs checking rather than assuming — automated digital products and live human-delivered advisory are not treated the same way.
If your income is straightforward professional advisory billed to named clients, OIDAR usually isn't your world. If you run a paid app, a subscription tool or a self-serve digital product with Indian users, it is worth raising specifically so the right treatment is confirmed.
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 that arises here. So even where GST is a non-issue — say all your paying clients are abroad — the income-tax and reporting questions can still apply to the India-linked portion.
Fees paid by an Indian client are typically received into an NRO account, and the payer may deduct TDS before paying you. That TDS is not a final cost — it is credited against your actual tax, and where a tax treaty (DTAA) between India and your country of residence applies, it can reduce the rate or shift where the income is finally taxed. The practical work is matching what was deducted to what is actually due, claiming any treaty benefit, and filing so nothing is taxed twice.
None of this is a reason to avoid Indian clients — it is simply two workstreams that have to be run together. The GST treatment governs whether you charge or register; the income-tax treatment governs what you owe and what comes back. A worked example makes the split clearer.
A worked example: a designer in Dubai with mixed clients
Karthik lives in Dubai and freelances as a brand designer. Two of his clients are agencies in the UAE and Europe; one is a startup in Bengaluru. He has been asked by the Bengaluru client for a GST number and isn't sure whether he needs one.
Taken apart, the picture is manageable. His UAE and European work is supplied to recipients outside India and paid in foreign currency, so it points toward export of services — zero-rated, and where he is registered, 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 actually need to be assessed against the rules and his turnover. The two strands have different answers even though it is one freelancer doing one kind of work.
On the income side, the Bengaluru client's fees are India-source. They are received into Karthik's NRO account, the client may deduct TDS, and because India and the UAE have a tax treaty, his CA checks how the income is finally taxed and whether the deducted TDS is fully credited or partly refundable. The outcome is a clean split: the foreign work kept correctly outside India's GST burden, the Indian engagement handled the way the rules require, and the income reported once, in the right place.