GST Rules for Visa Consultancy Services

Visa consultancy services in India are generally billed under SAC 999721 (immigration advisory and visa facilitation) at the standard 18% GST rate, split into CGST 9% + SGST 9% for same-state clients or charged as IGST 18% for out-of-state clients, and every invoice must carry the SAC code, GSTIN, place of supply, and tax breakup required under Rule 46 of the CGST Rules. Study-abroad counselling that includes university application support typically falls under a separate SAC, 999729. This article is general informational guidance only, not professional tax advice — GST rates, thresholds, and classification rules can change and can vary by circumstance, so confirm your specific treatment with a qualified Chartered Accountant before filing. Below is how classification, tax calculation, invoicing, and return filing fit together for a visa or coaching consultancy.

What SAC code applies to visa consultancy services?

Under India's GST framework, every service is classified by a Services Accounting Code (SAC), and the code determines how the service is reported in your returns. For a visa or immigration consultancy, the relevant code for core advisory and filing work is 999721 — immigration advisory and visa facilitation services. This covers the bulk of what a typical consultancy bills: assessing eligibility, preparing and filing visa applications, liaising with embassies or immigration authorities, and general immigration advisory work.

Many consultancies also offer study-abroad counselling that goes beyond visa filing — helping a student shortlist universities, prepare applications, and secure admission. That is a distinct service, and it is typically billed under SAC 999729, the code for other educational support services. The distinction matters because SAC codes feed directly into how your GST returns categorise revenue, and getting the code wrong on a recurring basis can create mismatches that are painful to unwind later. If your invoicing spans both visa filing and study-abroad counselling, treat them as separate line items with separate codes rather than folding everything into one generic description.

A tool that lets you configure a SAC code per service line — rather than one fixed code for the whole invoice — removes a lot of this manual judgment call at billing time. Our overview of GST invoicing software for visa consultants covers how this is typically set up in practice.

How is GST calculated on a visa consultancy invoice — CGST/SGST or IGST?

Most professional and consultancy services in India, including visa facilitation and immigration advisory, attract GST at the standard rate of 18%. What changes from invoice to invoice is not the rate but how that 18% is split, and the split depends entirely on where the consultancy and the client are registered relative to each other.

If the consultancy and the client are both registered in the same state — an intra-state supply — the 18% is divided evenly into CGST 9% (collected by the central government) and SGST 9% (collected by the state government). If the client is registered in a different state from the consultancy — an inter-state supply — the entire 18% is charged as a single IGST component instead, with no CGST/SGST split. This is a common source of invoicing errors for consultancies that serve clients across multiple states, since the correct treatment hinges on the "place of supply," not simply on where your office happens to sit.

Doing this split manually for every invoice, especially for a consultancy handling clients across several states, is where mistakes creep in. Software that auto-calculates CGST/SGST versus IGST based on the registered addresses on file removes that manual step entirely — see our guide on accounting software for visa consultants in India for how this integrates with day-to-day billing.

What needs to be on a valid GST invoice for consultancy services?

A GST tax invoice for services is not a free-form document — it must comply with Rule 46 of the CGST Rules, which sets out the mandatory fields. Missing or incorrect fields can cause problems both for your own filing and for a client trying to claim input tax credit against your invoice, so it is worth treating this as a checklist rather than an afterthought.

For a consultancy issuing dozens of invoices a month across visa filings, coaching fees, and ancillary services, keeping every one of these fields consistent by hand in a spreadsheet or a generic invoicing tool is where errors accumulate — a wrong GSTIN digit, an omitted SAC code, or a place-of-supply left blank. Purpose-built invoicing that locks these fields into a template per client and service line reduces that risk substantially.

How does GST work if a consultancy also runs IELTS/PTE coaching?

It is common for a consultancy to run visa and immigration services alongside an IELTS or PTE coaching arm, often billing the same client for both — a visa filing fee and a coaching batch fee on one invoice. This is entirely legitimate under GST, but each service line on that invoice needs its own correct SAC code and tax treatment rather than being lumped into a single undifferentiated charge. Visa facilitation would sit under SAC 999721 while the coaching or related educational support could fall under 999729, and if the coaching component has any different applicability considerations for your business, that needs to be reflected accurately rather than assumed identical to the visa fee.

Practically, this means your invoicing needs to support multiple line items on a single client bill, each carrying its own SAC code, taxable value, and tax amount — while the CGST/SGST versus IGST determination still applies uniformly to the whole invoice based on the place of supply. Consultancies running both verticals often find that a system built to handle coaching batches, fee schedules, and visa case billing side by side — like the workflows described in our piece on coaching institute CRM software for India — removes the need to reconcile two separate billing systems into one GST-compliant invoice.

How does invoice data feed into GST return filing?

GST-registered businesses file returns on a monthly or quarterly cycle depending on their registration category, and the data that populates those returns comes directly from your invoices. Specifically, the invoice number, date, customer GSTIN (where the client is registered), place of supply, taxable value, and the CGST/SGST or IGST amounts charged all feed into the B2B and B2C sections of GSTR-1, the outward supply return.

If that data is scattered across manually created invoices in different formats, someone — usually your accountant or a designated staff member — has to reconstruct it every filing period, which is slow and error-prone. Keeping every invoice field consistent from day one, and having a clean export of invoice number, date, GSTIN, place of supply, and tax amounts ready to hand to your CA, turns return preparation into a matter of minutes rather than days.

This is the specific gap VisaBOS's GST invoicing module is built to close. It auto-calculates the CGST/SGST or IGST split based on the registered addresses on file, applies the correct SAC code per configured service line, supports multiple service lines — visa fee, coaching fee, and so on — on a single invoice, and exports a GST report in CSV with invoice number, date, GSTIN, place of supply, and tax amounts that your CA can use directly for GSTR-1 preparation. To be clear, VisaBOS does not itself file GST returns — it is not a GST filing utility — it simply keeps your invoice data clean and export-ready so the actual filing, done by you or your CA, is faster and more accurate.

One last point worth repeating: everything above is general, structural guidance based on how GST commonly applies to visa consultancy and related educational services in India. Rates, thresholds, and classification details are set and periodically revised by the GST Council and tax authorities, and your specific situation — turnover, service mix, states of operation — can change which rules apply to you. Before finalising your GST registration status, invoice templates, or return filing approach, confirm the details with a qualified Chartered Accountant.

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