SAC Code for Education and Training Services

Education is the one area of services where the SAC code tells you less than the supplier does. A school and a coaching centre can teach the same Class 12 physics syllabus, and one is exempt while the other charges 18%. The code classifies the kind of teaching. The exemption turns on who is teaching and what the course leads to. Most coaching, test preparation and corporate training is 999293, and it is taxable. This post sets out the codes in heading 9992, the exemption test that decides the tax, and where online and foreign courses land.

Heading 9992: where education services sit

Service accounting codes all start with 99, and heading 9992 is education. Our SAC code reference covers the wider structure of Chapter 99; within this heading the groups run in the order a student would meet them: pre-primary, primary, secondary, higher education, specialised education, and then a catch-all group for everything else, which is where most commercial training lives.

Two points trip people up. First, a SAC code is a description of the service, not a rate. The same code can be exempt in one supplier's hands and taxable in another's. Second, the digits you have to print on an invoice depend on your turnover, as with HSN codes for goods, so a four-digit 9992 is sometimes enough for reporting but six digits tell the reader far more.

The codes, and how each is usually treated

Group 99924 also carries further codes for other higher education services. If your course sits at the edge of a group, read the official scheme of classification on cbic-gst.gov.in rather than a third-party list, because descriptions vary between summaries.

What is exempt: the educational institution test

The core exemption covers services provided by an educational institution to its students, faculty and staff. Everything depends on the definition of an educational institution, which is an institution providing services by way of:

1. Pre-school education and education up to higher secondary school or equivalent.
2. Education as part of a curriculum for obtaining a qualification recognised by any law for the time being in force. Degrees from recognised universities are the obvious example.
3. Education as part of an approved vocational education course.

Read those three limbs carefully, because each one excludes something. A private university's degree programme is inside limb two. A certificate course from the same university that leads to no recognised qualification may not be. A coaching institute that prepares students for board exams is outside all three, because it does not itself provide the school education or grant the qualification.

Training under government skill-development schemes has its own exemption entries, covering certain training partners and implementing agencies approved under national skill schemes. The scheme names, approving bodies and conditions have been amended more than once, so if your revenue depends on one of them, read the current exemption notification on cbic-gst.gov.in rather than relying on the scheme's marketing material.

Services supplied to schools and exam boards

A second set of exemptions applies to services supplied to an educational institution. For institutions providing pre-school education and education up to higher secondary, these cover:

• Transport of students, faculty and staff.
• Catering, including a government-sponsored mid-day meal scheme.
• Security, cleaning and housekeeping services performed in the institution.

Services relating to admission to, or conduct of examinations by, an educational institution are also exempt, and that entry is not limited to schools. Central and State boards of education conducting examinations have been treated as educational institutions for this purpose, so services to them for conducting exams are generally exempt. The precise scope of these entries has been clarified by circular more than once; confirm the current wording before you drop GST from an invoice.

The limit is the practical point. A bus operator carrying school children is exempt. The same operator carrying college students charges GST, because the transport, catering and housekeeping entries stop at higher secondary.

What is taxable at 18%

Outside those exemptions, education and training services are taxable at the standard rate. The September 2025 rate rationalisation reorganised goods far more than services, and 18% remains the rate for most taxable services including commercial training. In practice this captures:

• Private coaching and tuition centres, including school-level tuition classes.
• Test preparation for entrance and competitive examinations.
• Corporate training: leadership, sales, compliance, software and soft-skills programmes delivered to a company's employees.
• Online courses that do not lead to a qualification recognised by law.
• Hobby and skill classes such as music, dance, art and sports coaching run by private academies.

Corporate training is where the classification question is closest to consultancy. A workshop that trains staff is 999293. An engagement that diagnoses the organisation and redesigns its processes, with training as one deliverable, may be management consulting instead; our note on SAC codes for consultancy services covers that boundary. Code the principal supply and keep the scope document.

Online courses, and education from abroad

For an Indian supplier, delivering a course online does not change the analysis. An online degree from a recognised university sits inside the educational institution exemption; a paid course on a learning platform is taxable at 18%, usually under 999293 or 999294.

For a foreign supplier the question becomes whether the course is an OIDAR service: online information and database access or retrieval. Pre-recorded course libraries, e-learning subscriptions and self-paced platforms generally are. The tax then follows the recipient:

• Registered Indian business buying seats for its staff: the business pays GST under reverse charge and can generally claim credit.
• Individual learner or unregistered business: the foreign platform must register under the simplified OIDAR scheme and charge GST itself.

Live instruction by a human teacher over video is a harder case. Our OIDAR guide treats it as typically outside OIDAR, but the 2023 change to the definition removed the requirement that the supply be essentially automated, which narrowed that carve-out. Classify a live-tutoring business on its actual facts and take advice before assuming it has no Indian obligation.

Registration and invoicing for training businesses

A coaching centre or training company follows the ordinary registration threshold for services: ₹20 lakh of aggregate turnover in most states, ₹10 lakh in the special-category states. Two details matter in education:

1. Exempt fees count towards aggregate turnover. A trust running an exempt school and a taxable coaching wing tests the threshold on both together. A person making only exempt supplies is not liable to register at all.
2. Mixed institutions must reverse credit. Where the same inputs serve both exempt and taxable courses, credit attributable to the exempt side is not available and must be apportioned under the rules on common credit.

On invoices, name the course and the SAC rather than a generic "fees" line. "JEE preparation, one-year classroom programme, 999293" supports its own classification. "Course fees" supports nothing.

Training companies that sell to corporates also have a customer-side check to make. A corporate client's GSTIN on your invoice decides whether it can take credit, so a wrong or cancelled number turns into a payment dispute. You can check a client's registration status and filing history in one call with our GSTIN verification service at ₹0.50 per check, or try five free lookups a day on the GST number search tool without signing up.

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