GSTR-6 Due Date

Distributing input tax credit across branches

An Input Service Distributor is an office of a business that receives invoices for input services on behalf of its other branches or units, and distributes the corresponding input tax credit to them. GSTR-6 is how that distribution is formally reported — it doesn't involve any tax payment itself, only the allocation of credit already accumulated at the ISD-registered office.

GSTR-6 is due by the 13th of the following month, the same date as GSTR-5 and QRMP's quarterly GSTR-1 — a business operating both an ISD registration and a QRMP-scheme registration in the same state should note these are separate filings on the same calendar date, not one combined filing.

Why businesses set up an ISD registration at all

An ISD registration is most useful for businesses with a centralised procurement function — head-office contracts for services like audit, legal, software licensing or advertising, where the benefit is genuinely shared across multiple branches but the invoice arrives at one location. Without an ISD registration, that head office would either have to absorb the credit without passing it on, or arrange for each branch to separately contract and pay for its share — both less efficient than centralising the input and distributing the credit through GSTR-6.