Quick read: The Guwahati pithe vlogger and the Northeast ₹10 lakh GST threshold
A show-cause notice slid under the kitchen door on a Thursday morning while the til pitha was still frying.
🥘 Priyanka Borah, 29, makes Assamese traditional sweets — pithe, ghila pitha, til pitha — on YouTube (195k) and Instagram (80k) from her Khanapara flat in Guwahati. Solo creator. Brand collabs, YouTube creator fund, affiliate links, and paid pithe-making workshops at ₹1,500 per head. Four income streams she had never added up into a single number.
🚨 The number, added up, was ₹13.5 lakh. The SGST Range Office, Guwahati, issued a show-cause notice under Section 122 of the CGST Act: ₹1.35 lakh initial penalty for making taxable supplies without GST registration. Plus retrospective GST on outward supplies since the date of crossing. Plus interest at 18% per annum. The date of crossing was October 2025 — four months before the notice arrived. The registration threshold in Assam is ₹10 lakh, not ₹20 lakh. Eleven states have this lower threshold. Priyanka had never heard the phrase "special-category state."
🚀 Her aunt's CA cousin in Shillong — Bikash Deka, who handles GST for Northeast construction companies — called within hours of seeing the notice photograph on WhatsApp. He told her the liability was real, the timeline was pressing, and she should install the agent and get her turnover breakdown together that evening. She typed in Assamese: "মোৰ workshop fee cash পাইছিলোঁ, invoice নাছিল — সেইটো count হয় নে?" The agent confirmed: yes, cash workshop fees count, barter fair value counts, all four streams count — together, from April 1st. She had the GST portal calculator output printed and highlighted before the first call with Bikash.
✅ GST registration filed. Udyam registration done the same night — it strengthens the compounding application under Section 128. Retrospective GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B returns in progress. Penalty hearing before the Range Officer scheduled for June. The ₹1.35 lakh demand is not yet settled, but the compounding route is open and Bikash is not worried. Priyanka has resumed workshops. She knows the aggregate turnover number for FY 2026-27 from day one.
🇮🇳 If you create in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, or Jammu & Kashmir — your GST registration threshold is ₹10 lakh, not ₹20 lakh. It includes every income stream combined: brand fees, ad revenue, workshop payments, barter fair value. The liability attaches from the date you cross it, not from the end of the financial year. If your combined income is approaching ₹8 lakh for the year, the clock is already running.