Free tool
IGST or CGST + SGST on a freight invoice?
It depends on the place of supply, and the place of supply for transportation of goods is not where the goods go. It is the customer's location if they are registered, and where the goods were handed over if they are not — two different answers on the same lane. State the facts and this names the section that decides it.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. No account, no form, no upload — and every answer names the rule and the day it took effect, so you can check it against your adviser rather than believe it.
You
Who is raising the invoice.
Your customer
Who is being billed.
The line
What it comes to.
The rate belongs to the service, not to this page. Leave it blank and the head of tax is still settled — the amount is not, and it says so.
The one that catches people
A registered customer moves the place of supply.
Under s.12(8), transportation of goods supplied to a registered person is supplied at that person's location. Supplied to somebody not registered, it is supplied where the goods were handed over for transport. Same lane, same truck, same invoice value — and on a Mumbai forwarder's books the first can be IGST and the second CGST + SGST.
The second thing worth knowing is what changed. The Finance Act 2023 omitted section 13(9) with effect from 1 October 2023. Before that, freight billed to a recipient outside India had its place of supply at the destination of the goods; after it, that class of supply falls to the general rule at s.13(2) and follows the recipient. Rules with dates on them are the only kind worth trusting, which is why every row here carries the day it took effect.
Where the facts do not settle it, this refuses and names what is missing rather than filling the column. A head of tax invented to complete an invoice is the one figure on it nobody can defend, and it is the person filing the return who signs for it.
SIAARU determines this on every charge line at the moment an invoice is raised, stamps the rule and the section on the line, and buckets the invoice by head — so a return is assembled from what was decided rather than reconstructed afterwards. That is ForwarderDesk. This page is a calculation, not advice; your adviser governs.