“place of supply” means the place of supply as referred to in Chapter V of the Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act;
Chapter V of the IGST Act provides for determination of the ‘place of supply’ in respect of any supply of goods or supply of services. This expression has the utmost significance in determining the nature of tax payable on a supply. Simply put, a supply shall be intra-State(liable to CGST, SGST) where the location of the supplier and place of supply as determined under the said Chapter are in the same State (or Union Territory), and neither the supplier nor the recipient are SEZ units/ developers. In any other case, the supply would be treated as an inter-State supply, liable to IGST.
There is no provision in the law that declares that GST is a ‘destination based tax’. Place of supply is therefore the destination of supply attracting tax under this law. Place of supply is not left out as a question of fact that each supplier has to determine but is a question of law that is left to only be discovered by an application of the law.
Chapter V deals with determination of ‘place of supply’ under the following brackets:
(a) Goods, other than supply of goods imported into, or exported from India.
(b) Goods imported into, or exported from India.
(c) Services where location of supplier and recipient is in India.
(d) Services where location of supplier or location of recipient is outside India.
(e) Online information and database access or retrieval services (OIADARS) provided by a person located in a non-taxable territory to a non-taxable online recipient (i.e., Government, governmental or local authorities, individuals, other persons receiving such services for purpose other than commerce, industry, business, profession, but located in taxable territory).