Plain-English guides to registering, running and staying compliant as a business in India.
You can ask for your GST registration to be cancelled if the business has closed, has been transferred or merged, has changed its constitution, or no longer needs to be registered, including when you registered voluntarily and want out. File Form GST REG-16 on the portal within 30 days of the event. Declare the stock
There is no single “business licence” in India. What you need depends on five things: what you sell, where you operate, how big you are (turnover and staff), whether you trade across borders, and what sector you are in. A freelance designer may need nothing beyond PAN and, once past the threshold, GST. A restaurant
Every business in India deals with income tax in two ways. It pays tax on its own profit, and it often deducts or collects tax on other people’s income on the government’s behalf. The first comes down to your entity type and how you compute profit. The second (TDS and TCS) comes down to whom
Short answer: getting your company name approved by the MCA does not give you any trademark rights in that name. A company name, a brand (trade) name, a domain name and a registered trademark are four separate things, handled by different systems, and each protects something different. Only a registered trademark gives you a statutory
Every company, however small, must keep books of account under section 128 of the Companies Act, 2013. Small-company status earns no exemption from this. The books must be on accrual basis and in double entry. They must give a true and fair view of the company’s affairs, and be kept at the registered office or
Good bookkeeping for a small business comes down to four habits. Use one bank account for business money only. Record every transaction within the week it happens, with the bill attached. Reconcile the books with the bank, GST data and tax credits every month. Close each month before starting the next. Do that and the
Annual compliance is the set of things a registered business must do every year simply to stay in good standing with the Registrar: keep proper books, have them audited where the law requires, hold the meetings the law prescribes, and file a financial statement and an annual return with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. A
You need an Importer Exporter Code (IEC) if your business imports goods into India or exports goods out of it; customs will not clear a commercial shipment without one, and DGFT schemes and authorisations are linked to it. The IEC is issued online by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), it is tied to
The composition scheme lets a small registered business pay GST as a flat percentage of its turnover, file one short statement a quarter and one return a year, and skip invoice-level reporting. Goods businesses qualify with previous-year turnover up to ₹1.5 crore (₹75 lakh in eight States). Service providers have a separate option up to
A private limited company keeps its core statutory registers at its registered office: the register of members, the register of directors and key managerial personnel, the register of charges, the register of contracts in which directors are interested, the register of loans and investments, and the register of significant beneficial owners. They are not filed
