On 8 October 2026, the GST Council recommended a change for small online sellers who keep stock in other states. If the government makes it law, those sellers will no longer need an office of their own in each of those states.
Say you make ceramic mugs in Khurja, the pottery town in Uttar Pradesh. Most of your Amazon orders come from Bengaluru and Mumbai, so you send stock to Amazon’s warehouses in Karnataka and Maharashtra, close to those buyers. And every month, you pay rent for two offices where nobody works, one in each state.
You pay that rent because of GST, and the new rule is about exactly that.
Why sellers rent offices nobody works in
Under GST, a warehouse that holds your stock counts as a place of your business. So when Amazon keeps your mugs in Karnataka, you need a GST registration in Karnataka, separate from the one you have in Uttar Pradesh.
Every registration needs a main address in that state, called the principal place of business. In practice, the marketplace’s warehouse is not accepted as that address today. It can only be added afterwards, as an additional place of business.
So sellers rent an address. A virtual office gives you an address in the state, with a rent agreement and the other papers GST asks for as proof. You register with that address. Then you add Amazon’s warehouse to the registration, and upload the updated certificate in Seller Central. Flipkart also asks for its warehouse to be on your GST registration before it takes your stock.
When we onboard sellers who want stock in other states, this is the paperwork they go through today. It works. But each new state means another rent agreement, and another wait while an officer approves the warehouse address.
What the new rule changes
The Council recommended a new rule, rule 14B of the Central GST Rules. In a state where you have no premises of your own, you will be able to give the marketplace’s warehouse there as your principal place of business. The GST portal will then grant the registration automatically, without an officer checking it.
For the mug maker, that means one registration in Karnataka and one in Maharashtra, each with Amazon’s warehouse as the address. There are no rent agreements and no empty offices. The Finance Ministry’s press release says the rule will let small sellers expand to other states “without having to set up a place of business in each State”.
The same release makes a second change that helps. Except for the main address, changes to a registration will be accepted automatically on the portal. So once this change is also in force, adding another Amazon or Flipkart warehouse to a registration should not mean waiting for an officer.
Who can use it
The rule is for small sellers of goods who sell through marketplaces. The press release does not measure “small” by your sales. Its limit is on the GST you charge business buyers, which they can then claim back, and the limit is ₹2.5 lakh a month. Stock you send between your own registrations does not count.
Most of the mug maker’s buyers are people buying for their own homes, and they cannot claim GST back. So the mug maker would stay well within this limit. Some news reports describe the limit as ₹2.5 lakh of monthly sales instead, so check the final rule when it comes out.
Business Standard and other reports add a few more conditions:
- You must keep a real place of business in your home state. For the mug maker, that is the workshop in Khurja.
- You can hold one such registration in each state.
- The registration covers only what you sell through marketplaces, not sales to local shops or through your own website.
- The marketplace’s consent to the use of its warehouse will be given automatically through the system.
What stays the same
Each state is still a separate GST registration, with its own returns every month or every quarter. The new rule removes the need for an office. It does not remove the returns your CA files for each state.
Moving your own stock from Khurja to the warehouse in Karnataka also works as it does today. It is a supply between two of your own registrations, so it needs a GST invoice, and an e-way bill when the shipment is worth more than ₹50,000. Our FBA shipment checklist covers the rest of the paperwork for sending stock to Amazon.
Quick commerce is different. Blinkit buys stock from brands and receives it in its own warehouses, so since September 2025, brands on Blinkit have not needed an additional place of business in each state. Our guide to Blinkit’s fill rate and seller tiers explains how that works. The new rule matters most for marketplace warehouses, like Amazon’s and Flipkart’s.
When it starts, and the steps
It has not started yet. The Council’s recommendation becomes law only when the government notifies the new rule, and no date has been given.
What we know so far is the outline. You will apply on the GST portal and give the marketplace’s warehouse as your address, and the portal will grant the registration if you meet the conditions. The step-by-step process has not been published yet. When the government publishes it, we will add the steps here.
Until then, you still need an address of your own in each state where you keep stock. If you need stock in Bengaluru before the rule starts, go the old way. If a new state can wait, we would wait for the rule rather than pay rent for an office you may soon not need.
Use the time to get ready. Keep your home-state registration in order, because the new route needs a real place of business in your home state. Look at where your orders come from, since a nearby warehouse helps most in the states with the most orders. And ask your CA what the returns for each extra state will cost you.
Where we come in
We onboard sellers on Amazon, Flipkart and the quick-commerce apps, and we help them keep stock in marketplace warehouses across states. So we know where first-time sellers get stuck: a warehouse that is missing from the GST certificate, or a rent agreement the officer will not accept. We plan which warehouses to use and set up your listings and shipments. Your CA files the registrations and returns, and we work alongside them. Everything stays in your own seller account. See our marketplace onboarding work.
We are not tax advisers. Your CA should confirm whether you qualify for the new route once the rule is out. If you are not registered for GST at all yet, start with our guide to selling online without GST.
