SAC Code List for Services: Structure, Rates and Reporting

A SAC — Services Accounting Code — is the six-digit number that identifies a service under GST, and it always begins with 99. It does for services exactly what HSN does for goods: it is the hook that a rate notification hangs on. Read it as 99 (services) + two digits for the heading + two digits for the specific service, so 998313 is IT consulting and support, sitting under heading 9983 for professional, technical and business services.

Below: the structure, the main headings under Chapter 99, a representative table of common services with their current rates, what you must report and where, and how to handle a contract that covers several services at once.

SAC vs HSN: which one applies to you

The dividing line is what you are actually supplying, not what kind of business you are. A manufacturer that also sells an annual maintenance contract quotes HSN on the machine and SAC on the maintenance. A software company that ships a physical dongle quotes SAC on the licence and HSN on the hardware.

The full mechanics of the goods side — the 2/4/6/8 hierarchy and the digit rules — are in HSN code explained. Everything below is the services side.

The 99xxxx structure, decoded

Three levels, two digits each, getting narrower as you go right.

Because the first two digits never change, the heading is the part that does the real work. Get the heading right and you have narrowed 99xxxx down to a manageable shortlist; get it wrong and no amount of care on the last two digits will help.

The main service headings under Chapter 99

These are the headings you will meet most often. This is a working subset, not the complete scheme — the full annexure runs from 9954 to 9999.

Common services, their SAC and current rate

A representative table of the services most often invoiced, with the code and the rate as it stands after the 22 September 2025 rate rationalisation. Several of these carry conditions — particularly the with-ITC versus without-ITC choices — which are noted rather than hidden.

Two of these are worth calling out. Goods transport by road and legal services from an advocate are among the most common reverse-charge cases in practice, which means the recipient pays the tax rather than the supplier — a mechanism explained in the reverse charge mechanism under GST. And any without-ITC rate is a genuine trade-off, not a discount: the lower rate comes at the cost of input tax credit on your own procurement, which matters more than the headline rate for an input-heavy business. See the ITC rules.

Reporting: invoices and the GSTR-1 summary

The digit requirement for SAC follows the same rule as HSN — Notification 78/2020-Central Tax, effective 1 April 2021, keyed to aggregate annual turnover in the preceding financial year:

• AATO up to ₹5 crore: 4 digits, mandatory on B2B invoices and optional on B2C.
• AATO above ₹5 crore: 6 digits, mandatory on all invoices.

In practice this is simpler for services than for goods, because a SAC is six digits anyway — truncating 998313 to 9983 to satisfy a four-digit minimum gains you nothing, so most service providers print the full code regardless of turnover. The AATO definition itself, including what counts towards it, is in annual aggregate turnover under GST.

Table 12 of GSTR-1 then requires a summary of outward supplies grouped by HSN or SAC. The phase 3 changes applicable from the February 2025 return period replaced free-text entry with selection from a dropdown of valid codes and made the summary mandatory rather than best-effort, and Table 12 was subsequently split into separate B2B and B2C tabs. The consequence for a service business is that the code on the invoice and the code in the return must agree and must be a real code — a billing system with a free-text SAC field will produce a return that reconciles badly. Worth checking against how your invoicing software handles GST, with deadlines in GST return due dates for 2026.

Mixed and composite supplies

This is where most real service contracts get interesting, because they rarely contain exactly one service. The GST law gives two answers, and which one applies is a question of fact.

A composite supply, defined in section 2(30) of the CGST Act, is two or more taxable supplies naturally bundled and supplied together in the ordinary course of business, where one is clearly the principal supply. Section 8(a) then taxes the whole supply at the rate of that principal supply, and you quote the principal supply's SAC. A software implementation contract that includes training and one year of support is normally composite: the customer is buying the implementation, and the rest travels with it.

A mixed supply, defined in section 2(74), is two or more individual supplies made together for a single price where the bundle is not natural — they could perfectly well be sold separately. Section 8(b) taxes the whole thing at the highest rate applicable to any component. This is the expensive outcome, and it is often avoidable simply by pricing and invoicing the components separately rather than as one bundled line.

Finding the right SAC for what you sell

1. Pick the heading first. Decide whether you are supplying professional services (9983), transport (9964/9965), construction (9954), education (9992) and so on. This is the decision that matters; the last two digits usually follow obviously.
2. Search the CBIC rate finder by description. It searches the notified service schedules and returns the code with its rate, which is faster and safer than working from a republished list.
3. Describe what you do, not what you call it. "Growth partner engagement" is not in the scheme; "management consulting" is. The classification follows the substance of the service.
4. Watch the exemption boundaries. Several headings contain both taxable and exempt entries — education under 9992 and health services under 9993 are the classic examples, where the exemption depends on who is supplying and to whom, not on the heading alone.
5. Fix it in the item master, once. A wrong SAC repeated across a year of invoices is a systematic error discovered all at once. Auditing the master is cheaper than correcting the output — the same argument made for goods in HSN code explained, and part of the broader GST compliance checklist.

Frequently asked questions