You earn from six places. Each one is taxed differently.

A creator earning ₹40 lakh from AdSense walked into our office last month convinced he owed 18% GST on all of it. He did not owe a rupee. He had simply never filed a one-page form.

That form is a Letter of Undertaking — Form RFD-11 — and it is the single most expensive piece of paper most creators have never heard of. On ₹40 lakh of AdSense, the gap between filing it and not filing it is ₹7,20,000.

This is the pattern we see again and again. Creator income is not one thing. It arrives from six different places, and each one carries its own treatment under GST, its own TDS position, and its own documentation. Treating them as a single revenue line is how money leaks.

1. Platform earnings

YouTube and Meta pay from outside India. That makes it an export of service, and exports are zero-rated — no GST due. But zero-rating is conditional. All five tests in Section 2(6) of the IGST Act must hold: supplier in India, recipient outside India, place of supply outside India, payment in convertible foreign exchange, and the two parties not being establishments of the same person.

Critically, the LUT must be on file before the first export of the financial year. A creator who exports in April and files the LUT in September has a five-month window where tax was actually payable. There is no retrospective fix.

One more trap: zero-rated export income still counts toward your ₹20 lakh aggregate turnover threshold for GST registration. A creator with ₹35 lakh of AdSense and ₹5 lakh of Indian brand income often believes they are at ₹5 lakh. They are at ₹40 lakh, and registration was due long ago.

2. Brand partnerships

Indian brand deals attract 18% GST on forward charge. The more interesting question is TDS, because the brand will deduct either 10% or 2% — and which one applies is decided by how the contract is worded, not by what the work actually was.

Professional or technical services fall under the old Section 194J, now consolidated into Section 393 of the Income-tax Act, 2025, at 10%. Contractual work under the old 194C sits at 1% for individuals and HUFs, 2% for others. On a year of brand income, that difference is real cash flow.

Read the tax clause before you sign. We do this for clients in 48 hours, and it is the line item they find hardest to give up once they have it.

A creator sees a free camera. The department sees ₹1.8 lakh of income plus a taxable supply.

3. Affiliate and commission income

This one changed recently and most books have not caught up. Section 13(8)(b) of the IGST Act was omitted with effect from 30 March 2026. Place of supply for intermediary services now follows the general rule — the recipient's location.

For a creator earning affiliate commission from a foreign principal, income that was previously taxable at 18% is now an export, zero-rated with an LUT, with full input credit. If your accountant is still charging 18% on Amazon Associates income from a foreign entity, you are likely looking at a refund rather than a liability.

The mirror applies too: an Indian creator paying a foreign talent manager now has a reverse-charge liability at 18%, with self-invoicing.

4. Courses and digital products

Here the tax follows where your buyer sits, not where you sit. Sales to Indian buyers attract 18%. Sales to foreign buyers are exports. Where the sale is fully automated and made to unregistered persons, the OIDAR rules apply and have their own registration and place-of-supply logic.

If you sell through a platform — Graphy, Kajabi, Rigi — the operator deducts TDS under the old Section 194-O on your payouts.

5. Events and appearances

Sponsorship changed on 16 January 2025. Where the sponsor is a body corporate, sponsorship moved to forward charge — meaning you now charge and pay the GST yourself rather than the sponsor paying it under reverse charge. A surprising number of invoices are still being raised the old way, creating mismatches on both sides.

6. Merchandise and physical sales

Goods, not services. That means the GST 2.0 rate structure applies — 0%, 5%, 18% or 40% since 22 September 2025 — and every SKU needs the correct HSN code. If you sell through a marketplace, the operator already collects TCS on your behalf, which you reconcile against your own returns.

The barter problem that sits across all of them

A brand ships you a camera worth ₹1,80,000 and you post about it. Two separate things have just happened.

Under GST, you supplied a promotional service and were paid in goods rather than cash. That is a supply for non-monetary consideration: 18% on the fair market value, and an invoice should have been raised.

Under income tax, once benefits you retain cross ₹20,000 in aggregate for the year, the brand must deduct 10% of fair market value — the old Section 194R, now Section 393(1) Sl. 8(iv). Because there is no cash payment to deduct from, the brand either recovers the tax from you or grosses it up.

Either way, it is visible in your AIS. A return that omits retained product while the department's own records show it is inviting a scrutiny you will lose.

Where this leaves you

None of this requires you to become a tax expert. It requires someone to map your income streams once, write down the treatment for each, and watch the calendar through the year rather than reconstructing it in March.

That is what the GoTaxHub Creator Desk does. If you want to know where you stand before committing to anything, send us your last two returns and three months of bank statements. You will get a two-page note with a rupee figure against each item, at no cost. Roughly half the notes we write get acted on by somebody else's accountant, and that is a perfectly good outcome.

This article is general guidance as at 22 September 2026 and is not advice on any specific situation. References reflect the Income-tax Act, 2025 (in force from 1 April 2026), the CGST and IGST Acts as amended, and GST rates effective 22 September 2025. Please obtain advice on your own facts before acting.