If you run an event or wedding planning company in India, GST invoicing is probably the least glamorous part of your job — and the one most likely to cost you money when it's done wrong. A wrongly split invoice doesn't just look sloppy to a corporate client's finance team; it can mean input tax credit gets rejected on their end, which turns into an awkward phone call for you.
Here's the good news: once you understand one rule, the CGST/SGST/IGST split stops being confusing.
The one rule that decides everything
GST asks a single question for every invoice: is the place of supply in the same state as your registered business, or a different one?
- Same state → CGST + SGST. The tax is split roughly in half between the central government and the state government. If your event company is registered in Karnataka and you're billing a client whose event (and billing address, generally) is also in Karnataka, you charge CGST + SGST.
- Different state → IGST. One combined tax, paid to the central government, which then settles with the destination state. If you're a Bengaluru-based planner running a wedding in Goa for a Mumbai-based client, this is almost always an inter-state supply.
That's it. The confusing part isn't the rule — it's figuring out which state actually counts for an event.
Why "place of supply" gets tricky for events
For most goods and services, place of supply is simple: it's wherever the buyer is registered. Event services are messier because there are three locations in play — your office, the client's billing address, and the venue itself.
Under GST rules, for services related to an event, the place of supply is generally where the event is actually held, not where your client's head office is. So even if you're invoicing a Mumbai corporate client, if the event happens in Bengaluru and your business is also registered in Karnataka, that's an intra-state (CGST+SGST) supply — not IGST, despite the client being out of state.
This is the single most common mistake we see: people default to IGST any time the client is from another state, without checking where the event physically happened.
A practical way to think about it:
- Same city, same client state, same vendor state → CGST + SGST, straightforward.
- Vendor and event location in the same state, client billed from elsewhere → still usually CGST + SGST, because place of supply follows the event.
- Event location itself is in a different state from your registration → IGST.
If you're ever unsure, the venue address — not the client's letterhead — is your starting point.
What a compliant invoice actually needs
Beyond the tax split, a GST-compliant invoice for an event company should include:
- Your GSTIN and the client's GSTIN (if they're claiming input credit — most corporate clients will be)
- A sequential, unique invoice number
- Place of supply explicitly stated
- HSN/SAC code for the service category
- Taxable value shown separately from the tax amount
- CGST/SGST or IGST broken out as separate line items — never a single blended "GST" figure
That last point trips up a lot of manually maintained spreadsheets. A single "18% GST" line doesn't meet the requirement; the split has to be visible.
The UAE wrinkle
If you're also running events in the UAE, this entire framework doesn't apply — you're dealing with VAT, not GST, and a completely separate registration and filing process. Don't try to reuse your Indian GST templates for UAE invoices; the field requirements, rates, and thresholds are different enough that it's worth treating as a fully separate compliance track, even if the operational side of running the event looks similar.
Where this usually breaks down operationally
Even event companies that understand the rule above often get it wrong in practice, for a mundane reason: the person raising the invoice (often whoever's free that week) isn't the person who knows where the venue was, and Excel doesn't ask.
The fix isn't more training — it's removing the manual decision entirely. If your invoicing tool already knows the event's venue location and your business's registered state, it can apply CGST/SGST vs IGST automatically, every time, without anyone having to remember the rule at 11pm while trying to get an invoice out before month-end close.
That's the approach we built into Strukto's invoicing module — the tax split is computed from the event record itself, not re-entered by hand on every invoice. If you're currently doing this in Excel or Tally with manual tax-type selection, it's worth asking how many of your last 20 invoices you'd actually bet were correct.
Strukto is built for event companies, starting in India — CRM, proposals, vendor management, and GST-compliant invoicing in one place. See how it works →