GST Section 9(5) 2026: When the Platform Pays Instead of You

Last updated: 28 August 2026. Section 9(5) of the CGST Act lets the Government notify categories of services on which the e-commerce operator pays the GST as if it were the supplier. Six clauses of Notification No. 17/2017-Central Tax (Rate) dated 28 June 2017 carry that list: passenger transport by cab, by omnibus, accommodation, house-keeping, restaurant service and local delivery. Where a supply falls inside one of them, the restaurant or the driver charges no GST and remits nothing. The platform does, and no TCS is collected on that supply.

Applicability Note: This guide is based on GST provisions applicable as of 28 August 2026. Whether a supply falls inside Section 9(5) turns on the exact clause it maps to and, for three of the six clauses, on whether the supplier is liable to register. Always verify the current position on gst.gov.in or with a GST professional before taking action.

Who Should Care?

This applies to:

• Platforms carrying cabs, hotel rooms, food orders or delivery jobs, who pay tax on those supplies from their own cash ledger
• Restaurants and cloud kitchens selling through aggregators, who still have a reporting obligation with no tax to remit
• Drivers, hosts, plumbers and delivery partners working out whether they need a GST registration at all
• Finance teams reconciling a platform's month across GSTR-8, Table 15 and Table 3.1.1

1. What Section 9(5) Actually Does

Section 9(5) is a deeming provision. It empowers the Government, on the Council's recommendations, to notify categories of services where the tax on intra-State supplies "shall be paid by the electronic commerce operator if such services are supplied through it", and then applies every provision of the Act to that operator "as if he is the supplier liable for paying the tax". The supplier stays the supplier commercially. For tax, the platform stands in their shoes.

Two provisos sit under it, and they matter offshore. The first proviso to Section 9(5) makes any person representing an operator with no physical presence in the taxable territory liable to pay. The second proviso requires such an operator with no representative here to appoint a person who then becomes liable. There is no version where nobody is answerable.

Section 9(5) is not reverse charge. Under Section 9(3) or 9(4) the recipient pays. Under Section 9(5) a third party who is neither supplier nor recipient does, which is why Q5 of Circular No. 167/23/2021-GST dated 17 December 2021 tells operators not to report these as inward supplies liable to reverse charge. In the operator's hands they are outward supplies.

2. The Notified List: Six Clauses, Two Different Designs

Everything notified under Section 9(5) lives in one instrument, Notification No. 17/2017-Central Tax (Rate), amended five times since. The clauses are not built alike: three switch off once the supplier is liable to register, three do not.

The consequence is easy to miss. A cab driver with ₹80 lakh of fares and a live registration is still inside clause (i), so the platform pays on every ride. A registered restaurant selling ₹4 crore through an aggregator is still inside clause (iv); Q3 of Circular 167 confirms the operator is liable on restaurant service supplied through it "including by an unregistered person". A plumber taking jobs through a platform, by contrast, steps outside clause (iii) once turnover makes them liable to register.

Note the wording of those three carve-outs: liable for registration under Section 22(1), not registered. Section 22(1) sets that at aggregate turnover above ₹20 lakh in a financial year, or ₹10 lakh for special category States under its first proviso. The ₹40 lakh figure people quote sits in the third proviso, open only to suppliers dealing exclusively in goods, so it never reaches these categories.

Clause (iv) turns on "specified premises", and that definition changed on 1 April 2025. Notification No. 08/2025-Central Tax (Rate) dated 16 January 2025 pointed it at clause (xxxvi) of paragraph 4 of Notification No. 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate) dated 28 June 2017, which Notification No. 05/2025-Central Tax (Rate) dated 16 January 2025 had rewritten. The old test was declared tariff; the current test is the value of supply of a unit of accommodation in the preceding financial year exceeding ₹7,500 per unit per day, or an opt-in declaration filed by 31 March of that year. In-hotel restaurants meeting either test bill their own GST on food.

3. Section 9(5) and Section 52 Are Different Machinery

Both provisions point at e-commerce operators and are routinely confused. They do opposite things, and one supply never attracts both.

The statutory link is the Explanation to Section 52(1). TCS is collected on the "net value of taxable supplies", and that expression is defined to mean taxable supplies "other than services notified under sub-section (5) of section 9". Q1 of Circular 167 says the same operationally: once restaurant service came under Section 9(5), operators stopped collecting TCS and reporting those supplies in GSTR-8, while TCS continued on everything else moving through the platform.

The 1% in Section 52(1) is the statutory ceiling, not the live rate. A note still showing 1% predates 10 July 2024, the same trap covered in the guide to GSTR-7 and GSTR-8 and their late fees.

One recent ruling is worth knowing on the TCS side. In Hiveloop Technology Private Limited v. Additional Director, Directorate General of GST Intelligence (Karnataka High Court, Writ Petition No. 21130 of 2022 (T-RES), order dated 9 March 2026), the court read Section 52 against its own words — the obligation arises where "the consideration with respect to such supplies is to be collected by the operator" — and held that a platform which does not collect the consideration is outside it. That is one High Court on one set of facts rather than a settled position.

4. What the Underlying Supplier Has to Do

Having no tax to pay is not the same as having nothing to do. A registered supplier whose service goes out under Section 9(5) reports it in Table 14(b) of GSTR-1, which auto-populates to Table 3.1.1(ii) of GSTR-3B with no tax payable against it. What that value must not also do is appear in Table 3.1(a), which double-counts the turnover and creates a demand nobody owes.

Table 14(a) is the neighbouring row and does something different: the operator-wise summary of supplies on which the operator collects TCS, already reported in Tables 4 to 10 of GSTR-1. Nothing auto-populates from 14(a) to GSTR-3B, and amendments run through Tables 14A and 15A. Source: the GSTN advisory on Tables 14 and 15 dated 10 January 2024, attributing both to Notification No. 26/2022-Central Tax dated 26 December 2022 and live since the January 2024 tax period.

Registration is the other half. Section 24(ix) compels registration of anyone supplying through a TCS-collecting operator, but expressly excludes "supplies specified under sub-section (5) of section 9". A driver or small restaurant selling only through platforms under Section 9(5) is therefore not dragged into compulsory registration and registers only on crossing Section 22(1). Notification No. 65/2017-Central Tax dated 15 November 2017 is often cited for this by mistake: it is a separate relief for service suppliers up to ₹20 lakh selling through a TCS-collecting operator, and it too excludes Section 9(5) supplies.

Turnover still counts. Q4 of Circular 167 is explicit that a restaurant's aggregate turnover under Section 2(6) includes what it sells through operators, "for threshold consideration or any other purpose in the Act" — invisible in your tax payments, fully visible in your threshold arithmetic.

5. What the Operator Reports and Pays

The operator reports its Section 9(5) supplies in Table 15 of GSTR-1, split into four sections by the registration status of each side, from invoice-level detail where both are registered down to place-of-supply and rate detail where neither is. They go nowhere else in GSTR-1 or the IFF, and the totals auto-populate to Table 3.1.1(i) of GSTR-3B, the table inserted by Notification No. 14/2022-Central Tax dated 5 July 2022.

Three operational points follow from Circular 167 and the GSTN advisory of 19 July 2022, each costing money if missed:

• The liability is paid in cash. Input tax credit cannot be set against the Table 3.1.1(i) figure. The operator's own credit stays available for its own supplies, such as commission.
• No proportional ITC reversal is required on account of the notified service, even though ITC is not admissible on restaurant service itself. Q6 of Circular 167 settles that.
• The operator issues the invoice for a Section 9(5) restaurant service, per Q10. Where the same order carries other supplies, Q9 advises billing the restaurant service separately, since liability for the rest stays with the seller.

Business customers get a credit consequence too. An "ECO – Documents" section under All Other ITC in GSTR-2B carries the rows of Table 15 where the recipient is registered, so that recipient can see the document and claim the credit, and those rows behave like any other 2B entry in the Invoice Management System. E-invoices are not auto-populated into Table 15, so operators add those records themselves.

6. Local Delivery: What Changed on 22 September 2025

Clause (v) is the newest entry and the one most businesses have not absorbed. Notification No. 17/2025-Central Tax (Rate) dated 17 September 2025 brought "services by way of local delivery" into Section 9(5) from 22 September 2025, subject to the same Section 22(1) carve-out.

CBIC's Frequently Asked Questions-2 on the 56th GST Council decisions, issued 16 September 2025, set out three cases at Q15 and Q16. Local delivery is taxable at 18%. Supplied directly by a registered person, that person pays. Supplied through an operator by someone not liable to be registered, the operator pays under Section 9(5). Supplied through an operator by a registered person, the FAQ puts the tax on that supplier. Read against the clause itself, the carve-out is keyed to being liable for registration under Section 22(1) rather than to being registered — the distinction drawn in Section 2 above.

Q17 of the same FAQs closes a classification argument that would otherwise have run for years: "Goods Transport Agency" does not include an electronic commerce operator by whom, or through whom, local delivery services are provided. A delivery platform is not a GTA, so the GTA rate options and reverse-charge route are not open to it.

Key Takeaways

• Check the clause, not the concept. Clauses (ii), (iii) and (v) switch off once the supplier is liable to register under Section 22(1); clauses (i) and (iv) do not, and clause (ia) carves out companies instead.
• A Section 9(5) supply never carries TCS. The Explanation to Section 52(1) excludes notified services from the net value of taxable supplies, so one supply cannot sit in both GSTR-8 and Table 3.1.1(i).
• Suppliers report but do not pay. Table 14(b) of GSTR-1 flows to Table 3.1.1(ii) of GSTR-3B with no tax against it, and that value must stay out of Table 3.1(a).
• Operators pay in cash. The Table 3.1.1(i) liability cannot be discharged from the credit ledger, and no proportional ITC reversal is required.
• Turnover still counts for the supplier. Sales through an operator under Section 9(5) go into aggregate turnover under Section 2(6) for every threshold in the Act.
• Local delivery has been inside Section 9(5) since 22 September 2025, at 18%, and a delivery platform is not a Goods Transport Agency.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a restaurant have to register for GST if it sells only through a food delivery app?

Not because of the app. Section 24(ix) excludes supplies specified under Section 9(5) from compulsory registration, so restaurant service sold through an operator does not by itself force a registration. The Section 22(1) threshold still applies, and Q4 of Circular No. 167/23/2021-GST confirms sales through the operator count towards aggregate turnover for that test.

Is Section 9(5) the same as reverse charge?

No. Under Sections 9(3) and 9(4) the recipient of the supply pays. Under Section 9(5) the e-commerce operator pays, and it is neither supplier nor recipient. Q5 of Circular No. 167/23/2021-GST tells operators specifically not to report these supplies as inward supplies liable to reverse charge in GSTR-3B.

Can an e-commerce operator use input tax credit to pay its Section 9(5) liability?

No. The GSTN advisory of 19 July 2022 on Table 3.1.1 states the tax is to be paid "in cash only and not by ITC", and Q7 of Circular No. 167/23/2021-GST says the same. The operator's credit stays available for its own outward supplies, and Q6 confirms no proportional reversal is required.

Who pays GST on the delivery charge collected by a quick-commerce app?

It depends on the delivery partner's registration position. Under clause (v) of Notification No. 17/2017-Central Tax (Rate), inserted by Notification No. 17/2025-Central Tax (Rate) dated 17 September 2025 with effect from 22 September 2025, the operator pays 18% where the person supplying the local delivery is not liable to register under Section 22(1). Where that person is liable to register, the carve-out applies and they pay it themselves.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional tax advice. GST rules are subject to frequent changes through notifications and circulars. Please consult a qualified tax professional or verify the current provisions on the official GST portal (gst.gov.in) before making any compliance decisions.

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