A Bengaluru exporter has two honest ways to ship without carrying tax on the invoice. File a Letter of Undertaking and send zero rated supplies out with no IGST at all. Or pay the IGST on every export invoice and wait for the refund to work its way back. Both are legal. Only one of them leaves your working capital where it belongs.
For a Jayanagar label posting parcels abroad every week, or a founder in Koramangala invoicing overseas customers in dollars, the undertaking is the cheaper answer by a distance. The third route, an export bond backed by a bank guarantee, exists for exporters who cannot furnish an undertaking at all. Almost nobody picks it voluntarily.
What breaks when the LUT lapses?
The undertaking covers one financial year and not a day beyond it. From 1 April the previous year's LUT is spent, whatever date it was filed on. An export invoice raised on 3 April against last year's acknowledgement is an export made without cover.
Three things follow. The supply stops qualifying for the no payment route, so IGST becomes payable on the invoice value. Interest runs from the date that tax fell due. And the shortfall reads as a failure to comply rather than a late filing, which is a harder conversation with an officer.
The repair is dull but real. You pay, you claim the money back through a refund application, and it sits with the exchequer while your buyer's remittance has already gone into the next production run. We see Bengaluru exporters lose a quarter of headroom to a lapse nobody noticed until the auditor asked for the acknowledgement.
Who in Bengaluru is caught by this, and from which invoice?
Every GST registered person making a zero rated supply is in scope, and that is wider than most readers expect. Exports of goods, exports of services and supplies to a Special Economic Zone unit or developer all sit in the same bucket.
- A D2C fashion label in Jayanagar shipping retail orders abroad through its own site or a marketplace. Each despatch is an export and needs cover from the first one.
- A SaaS founder in Koramangala raising a seed round and billing customers outside India. Export of services qualifies once the place of supply and the payment route line up.
- A unit supplying an SEZ occupier. SEZ space exists in the Electronic City and Whitefield belts, and a supply that never leaves Karnataka is still zero rated.
- A first year exporter in Bommasandra who took GST registration last month and has not yet raised an overseas invoice.
The bar to qualify is low. You need a live GSTIN, and you must not be under prosecution for a tax evasion offence above 2.5 crore rupees under the CGST Act, the IGST Act or an earlier law. Fail that test and the bond with a bank guarantee is what remains.
Which officer ends up holding your undertaking?
The undertaking is furnished on the common portal at gst.gov.in against your own GSTIN, so nothing about it travels to a counter in Bengaluru. What is local is who reviews it afterwards. A Bengaluru GST application is assigned to either a Karnataka state officer or a central officer, and either can raise clarifications and verify the principal place of business. The state side is the Karnataka Commercial Taxes Department; the central side works under the CGST Act.
A Karnataka GST registration number carries the state's own two digit code at the front, and we confirm the number the department issues you before anything is filed against it. That matters more than it sounds. An undertaking furnished against a suspended or cancelled GSTIN is worth nothing at all.
The sequence we run is short.
- We confirm the GSTIN status, the legal name and the principal place of business against the Bengaluru address on your registration.
- We prepare the undertaking on Form GST RFD-11, with two independent witnesses named and their addresses and occupations recorded.
- We furnish it on gst.gov.in for the financial year and sign with the authorised signatory's digital signature or EVC.
- We pull the acknowledgement with its reference number and file it with your export invoice set.
Which dates govern the year?
The LUT year is the financial year and nothing moves it. Filed in July, it still ends on 31 March. That single fact is behind most of the LUT trouble we clean up.
| What falls due | When | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh LUT for the year | Before the first export invoice of April | Every zero rated supply in that financial year |
| LUT after a new GST registration | Before the first overseas invoice | Supplies made once the GSTIN goes live |
| Renewal for the year ahead | February and March | Keeps 1 April covered with no gap |
| Karnataka enrolment certificate payment | 30 April | The annual profession tax for that year |
Two dates, one calendar. A Bengaluru exporter who diarises 1 April for the undertaking and 30 April for the Karnataka enrolment payment has removed both of the deadlines that actually catch small exporters here.
What does LUT filing cost in Bengaluru, and what is inside the fee?
The fee is ₹499 and the engagement runs 3 to 5 days from the point your papers reach us. Most files close sooner. The range exists because a suspended GSTIN or a missing authorised signatory takes a day to sort out before anything can be furnished.
Inside the fee sit the eligibility check, the drafting, the witness details, the filing on gst.gov.in, the acknowledgement and the diary entry for next year. Outside it sits nothing hidden. If your registration record needs fixing first, we say so before we file, not after.
What we ask you for is small. The GST registration certificate, the PAN of the business, and last year's acknowledgement where this is a renewal. Add the IEC where goods are moving, plus identity proof for the authorised signatory. For the statutory background that reads the same in every state, LUT filing in India explained sets out the rule and the form.
Where does Karnataka profession tax sit alongside the LUT?
This is the part Bengaluru exporters miss, because it has nothing to do with exports and everything to do with holding a Karnataka GSTIN.
Entry 2 of the Schedule to Karnataka Act 35 of 1976 catches persons registered or liable to be registered under the Karnataka Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. There is no turnover test and no employee test in that entry. Hold the GSTIN and you owe an enrolment certificate at ₹2,500 a year, taken on e-Prerana at ptax.karnataka.gov.in and administered by the Karnataka Commercial Taxes Department. Section 5(3) gives thirty days from the date the activity commences.
If you employ people, the registration certificate is a second and separate certificate. The deduction is ₹200 a month for eleven months and ₹300 for February, ₹2,500 across the year. It bites on a salary of ₹25,000 a month and above. The statement goes in on Form 5-A within twenty days of each month end.
- The enrolment certificate answers for your own liability. The registration certificate answers for your employees.
- Where more than one Schedule entry catches you, Explanation I means the ₹2,500 is paid once and not once per entry.
- The payment date is 30 April. It has been extended by separate order in some years, and one year's extension is no authority for the next, so we work to the statutory date and check the current position.
Neither certificate has anything to do with your LUT. Both hang off the same GSTIN, which is why we look at them in one sitting.
Who keeps your LUT renewal on the calendar each year?
We file undertakings for Bengaluru exporters the same way every year. Check the registration first, furnish the undertaking, keep the acknowledgement, and put next year in the diary before the current filing is even acknowledged. The work is done online by our CA and CS team, so there is nothing to post and nowhere to queue.
What a Bengaluru practice adds to a form filling desk is the second half of the picture. The GSTIN that carries your LUT is the same GSTIN that pulls you into the Karnataka profession tax net, with its own 30 April date. We handle both, and we tell you which one is genuinely due before we bill you for either.