Direct-to-consumer brands scale beautifully — until GST catches up. These are the seven mistakes behind almost every notice our e-commerce clients bring us.
1. Selling from a warehouse state without registration
Stock in a Delhi FBA warehouse? You need a Delhi GSTIN. Marketplaces share warehouse data with tax authorities; mismatches surface automatically.
2. Ignoring marketplace TCS
Amazon and Flipkart deduct 0.5% TCS on your sales. If you don’t claim it in GSTR-2X, that’s your margin sitting unclaimed on the portal.
3. Returns that never reach your GST
A 25% RTO rate means a quarter of your invoices need credit notes. Book them or you’re paying GST on revenue you never received.
4. 2B mismatch on input credits
Claiming credit your vendor never filed is the fastest route to a notice. Reconcile purchases against GSTR-2B every month, not at year-end.
5. Wrong place-of-supply on shipping
Freight charged to customers follows the goods. Bill it with the wrong state code and both states will eventually want their share.
6. Discount and cashback confusion
Post-sale discounts need pre-agreed terms to reduce taxable value. Ad-hoc cashbacks usually don’t — a classic audit finding.
7. Filing from spreadsheets forever
Past ~500 orders a month, manual reconciliation breaks. The fix isn’t heroics; it’s a monthly marketplace-to-books-to-GST reconciliation engine.
Every one of these is invisible in month one, expensive in month twelve.
Bequip runs exactly that engine for D2C brands — every channel, every state, reconciled monthly with credits recovered. If any of the seven felt uncomfortably familiar, our free Governance Health Check takes two minutes.