GST for Exporters: LUT Filing and Zero-Rated Invoices for E-commerce Sellers

GST for Exporters: What Changes When You Start Selling Abroad

For years, GST compliance for Amazon, Flipkart, and Meesho sellers meant one thing: domestic tax, domestic buyers, domestic TCS. That's shifting. India relaxed FDI norms in July 2026 to let inventory-based e-commerce platforms handle exports of Indian-made goods, and Amazon has publicly targeted $80 billion in e-commerce exports by 2030 — with health, wellness, and ayurvedic categories growing at roughly 45% a year through Amazon Global Selling.

If you're a GST-registered seller weighing your first export order, the tax treatment is genuinely different from a domestic sale — not harder, just different. Here's what actually changes.

Exports Are Zero-Rated, Not Exempt — and the Difference Matters

The most common mistake sellers make going international is assuming "no GST on exports" means the same thing as "GST-exempt." It doesn't.

Under Section 16 of the IGST Act, exports are zero-rated supply: you charge 0% GST on the invoice, but you can still claim full Input Tax Credit on everything that went into making the sale — packaging, freight, marketplace/platform fees, and raw materials, all of which you paid GST on at 18% or whatever the applicable rate was. On an exempt supply, by contrast, you'd lose that ITC entirely. Zero-rating is the more favourable treatment, and it's specifically designed to keep Indian exports price-competitive abroad.

This is also why exporters routinely end up in an ITC-refund position — you're claiming credit on inputs but charging nothing on output, so the credit has nowhere to offset except a refund.

The Two Ways to Export Without Paying IGST Upfront

You have two routes to ship zero-rated:

1. File an LUT (Letter of Undertaking) — a one-time-per-year declaration (Form RFD-11) that you'll meet your export obligations. Most regular exporters use this route.
2. Export under bond with IGST paid upfront, then claim it back via refund — more paperwork, ties up cash, and is really only relevant if you're ineligible to file an LUT (rare — mainly sellers prosecuted for tax evasion above ₹250 lakh).

For nearly every e-commerce seller reading this, LUT is the right call. Here's how to file it.

How to File Your LUT (Form RFD-11)

1. Log in to the GST portal (gst.gov.in) with your GSTIN credentials.
2. Navigate to Services → User Services → Furnish Letter of Undertaking (LUT).
3. Select the financial year you're filing for — LUTs are valid for one FY and must be refiled before April 1 each year.
4. Fill in the self-declaration confirming you'll export within 3 months of invoice date (or the extended period allowed) and repatriate export proceeds in convertible foreign exchange within the RBI-prescribed timeline.
5. Add two independent witnesses (name, address, occupation) — a formality but a mandatory field.
6. Submit with DSC or EVC the same way you'd file any other GST return.

Approval is typically immediate to a few days — there's no fee, and you don't need CA sign-off, though most sellers still route it through their filing partner alongside their regular GSTR-1/3B cycle. If you haven't registered for GST yet, start at the GST registration page — LUT filing requires an active GSTIN first.

You Also Need an IEC — a Different Registration Entirely

Your GSTIN doesn't authorize cross-border trade on its own. You need an Import Export Code (IEC) from the DGFT (Directorate General of Foreign Trade), a separate, one-time registration at dgft.gov.in using your PAN and business bank details. There's no renewal, only an annual "update" window (April–June) to keep the code active — miss it and DGFT can deactivate the code, which blocks Amazon Global Selling or any other export channel from processing your shipments until you reactivate it.

Sequence matters: get your GSTIN, then your LUT, then your IEC, in that order, before your first export shipment goes out.

Raising the Actual Export Invoice

A zero-rated export invoice differs from your usual domestic Amazon/Flipkart invoice in three ways:

• It must carry the exact wording: "SUPPLY MEANT FOR EXPORT UNDER LUT WITHOUT PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX"
• IGST is shown at 0%, not omitted — the rate field should explicitly read 0%, not be left blank
• Once goods are dispatched, the invoice must reference your shipping bill number and port code

You then report the shipment in Table 6A of GSTR-1 for that filing period. This is the table the GST system cross-checks against ICEGATE (Customs) shipping bill data — get the numbers right here, because a mismatch between your declared shipping bill and Customs' record is the single most common reason export refunds stall.

Take Meera, who sells ayurvedic skincare on Amazon and got approved for Amazon Global Selling into the US and UK in early 2026. Her first export shipment used her standard domestic invoice template with 18% IGST charged by mistake — Amazon's export workflow flagged it before dispatch, but if it had gone through, she'd have collected tax she wasn't entitled to and had to issue a credit note to fix it. Now her export invoices are a separate template with the LUT declaration hard-coded in.

Getting Your Money: Bank Realisation and the ITC Refund

Two separate flows of money matter here, and sellers sometimes conflate them:

1. Your export proceeds — the payment from your overseas buyer or Amazon's cross-border payout — must be realised in convertible foreign exchange and reflected as a Bank Realisation Certificate (BRC) or e-BRC. RBI requires realisation within 9 months of shipment for most goods exports; Amazon Global Selling handles the currency conversion and remittance on your behalf, but you still need the e-BRC data flowing correctly for your bank/CA to reconcile.

2. Your ITC refund — since your export sale itself carries 0% GST, all the GST you paid on inputs becomes a refund claim rather than an offset. File Form RFD-01 on the GST portal along with your GSTR-1 (Table 6A) and GSTR-3B for the period — processing typically runs 60–90 days. File monthly. Sellers who let three or four months of export shipments pile up before filing a refund claim create their own reconciliation backlog, and any single shipping-bill mismatch in that batch can hold up the entire claim.

If you're not sure whether your current ITC position already has surplus credit sitting unclaimed from GST 2.0's rate changes, that's worth checking before your first export claim — see our guide on GST 2.0's ITC impact for e-commerce sellers.

Where This Fits With Your Existing GST Filings

Exporting doesn't create a separate GST return cycle — it's reported within your normal GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for the month, just in the export-specific tables (6A for GSTR-1; export turnover is also called out separately in GSTR-3B's outward supply summary). Your domestic sales, TCS credit from Amazon/Flipkart/Meesho, and export shipments all sit in the same monthly filing. If you need a refresher on the core filing mechanics, see our guides on GSTR-3B and GSTR-1, or start your filing with our GST return filing service if you'd rather have a CA handle the export tables directly.

Should You Actually Do This?

Exporting isn't free money — you're taking on currency risk, longer payment cycles, and a genuinely new compliance track (LUT, IEC, shipping bill reconciliation, e-BRC) on top of what you already file domestically. It makes the most sense if:

• You're in a category with real overseas demand (Amazon's export growth is concentrated in health/wellness/ayurvedic, home décor, and apparel right now)
• Your margins can absorb a 60–90 day ITC refund cycle without straining working capital
• You're already comfortable with your domestic GST filing rhythm — export adds a table, not a new system, but only if the base system is already solid

If your domestic GSTR-1/GSTR-3B filing is still inconsistent, fix that first. Export compliance sits on top of a working domestic filing habit, not instead of one.

Once you've got export orders flowing, run your domestic numbers through the GST Calculator to sanity-check the 0%-vs-taxable split on a mixed order book, and use the Marketplace Profit Calculator to see how a zero-rated export order's margin compares to a domestic one after fees.