First, the honest caveat
This is a guide to a document, not to your tax position. Whether you need to register for GST, at what threshold, and what rate applies to what you sell are questions for a chartered accountant who has seen your actual numbers. Nothing here is tax advice, and Collabill calculates nothing.
The numbers brands ask for
- GSTIN — a 15-character registration number, if you are registered. The first two characters are your state code, which is why some finance teams ask for the state code separately even though it is already there.
- PAN — your permanent account number. Brands need it to deduct TDS correctly, and they will ask for it whether or not you are GST-registered.
- HSN or SAC — the classification code for what you sold. Creator services usually sit under a SAC code; your accountant will tell you which.
- The brand's own GSTIN, on their side of the document. They will give it to you; put it under their address.
None of these are universal. A creator in the UK is asked for a VAT number, one in the US for an EIN, one in the EU for a VAT ID and sometimes a reverse-charge note. The pattern is the same everywhere: a small set of labelled identifiers, printed exactly as the tax authority writes them.
Where they go on the page
Your identifiers sit with your own details, under your address. The brand's sit with theirs. Do not mix them into one block — a finance team scanning your invoice is looking for their own GSTIN in the “billed to” half, and will email you if it is not there.
If you charge tax, it is a line above the total: a label, the rate as you write it, and the amount. One line. A creator invoice does not need a tax breakdown table.
If you are not registered
Then you do not put a GSTIN on the invoice, because you do not have one, and you do not charge GST. Say so plainly if a brand asks — “I am not GST-registered” is a complete answer and finance teams process it every day. Send your PAN, which they do need.
Do not invent a placeholder, and do not copy one from a template. A wrong identifier on an invoice is worse than a missing one: it goes into somebody else's filing.
Label them the way you write them
Collabill prints tax fields as free-text label and value pairs, verbatim, in the order you enter them. It never looks a rate up, never derives one, and never validates a number against a registry — because a tool that quietly “corrects” a tax identifier is a tool that will one day quietly corrupt one.
The document should say what you typed. That is the whole promise.