Do You Need GST Registration to Sell on Amazon?
GSTZone Desk · Updated 2026
Short answer
Yes. If you sell goods through Amazon, Flipkart or any e-commerce operator, GST registration is compulsory from your very first sale — there is no turnover-based exemption for this, unlike a regular offline shop.
In detail
Every regular business gets a turnover cushion before GST kicks in — usually ₹40 lakh for goods. Marketplace sellers don’t get that cushion. Section 24 of the CGST Act specifically pulls anyone supplying goods through an e-commerce operator into compulsory registration, no matter how small the turnover is. Sell one shirt worth ₹500 through Amazon without a GSTIN, and technically you’re already non-compliant.
The reasoning is practical, not punitive: Amazon and Flipkart are required to collect tax at source (TCS) on every seller’s transactions, and that mechanism only works cleanly if every seller already has a GSTIN for the TCS credit to land in.
There is one genuine carve-out, introduced in 2023, for very small sellers who supply only WITHIN their own state through an e-commerce operator and stay under the normal threshold — they can enrol with an Enrolment ID instead of full registration. In practice this rarely helps a typical Amazon or Flipkart seller, because most marketplace fulfilment (especially FBA-style warehousing) routes orders across state lines, which knocks the seller straight out of that exception.
GSTZone tip
If you’re planning to list on a marketplace, register for GST before your first listing goes live — not after your first sale. Retro-fitting compliance after the marketplace has already flagged your account for a missing GSTIN is a much slower fix.
Related questions
What if I only sell services online, not goods?+
Services sold through an e-commerce operator still get the normal small-supplier exemption (₹20 lakh, or ₹10 lakh in special category states) in most cases — it’s specifically goods that lose the exemption.
Does this apply to my own website, not a marketplace?+
No — Section 24’s compulsory-registration-for-e-commerce rule is triggered by selling through an operator like Amazon or Flipkart that collects TCS. Selling goods through your own website follows the normal turnover threshold.
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