Short answer: GST on gym and fitness memberships in India is 5%, and you can't claim input tax credit on it. That's been the rate since 22 September 2025, when it dropped from 18%. I re-checked it on 27 July 2026 while writing this, and it hasn't moved since.
I'm spelling that out because a lot of the pages that rank for "GST on gym membership" still say 18%. One of them was refreshed in July 2026. If your accountant is working off a quick Google search, that's a real problem. So here's the current position, what the "no input tax credit" part actually costs you, whether you have to register at all, and a sample member bill with the rupee amounts filled in.
What's the GST rate on a gym membership right now?
Five percent. On a normal local sale it shows up as two halves: 2.5% CGST (the central government's share) and 2.5% SGST (your state's share). And no input tax credit for the gym.
The GST Council met on 3 September 2025 for its 56th meeting and recommended cutting the rate on "beauty and physical well-being services" from 18% to 5%. That's the official label, and it covers gyms, fitness centres, health clubs, yoga centres, salons and barbers. CBIC's own FAQ on that meeting settles it in one line at question 72: these services "will attract GST rate of 5% without ITC". The change took effect on 22 September 2025, through Notification 15/2025-Central Tax (Rate).
The bit people miss is that you don't get a choice. The old 18% rate came with input tax credit attached, and a few owners assumed they could stay on it and keep the credits. CBIC said no. Five percent without credit is the only option for this category.
| What changed | Until 21 Sep 2025 | From 22 Sep 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Rate on memberships | 18% | 5% |
| Input tax credit for the gym | Yes | No |
| Can you pick the other one? | Not applicable | No — 5% is mandatory |
Source: CBIC FAQs on the 56th GST Council meeting (3 September 2025), effective 22 September 2025.
Has it changed again since? No. The 57th Council meeting hasn't happened yet, and what's been reported about its agenda is registration, refunds and audits — not rates. So 5% stands as I write this. If you're reading this months later, check the date at the top.
What does "without ITC" mean for your costs?
Input tax credit — ITC — is the GST you already paid on your own purchases coming back to you as a discount on the GST you owe the government. Under the old rules a gym could subtract the GST on rent, machines, electricity and professional fees from the GST it had collected from members, then pay only the difference. That subtraction is gone.
Here it is in money. Say you buy a treadmill for ₹2,00,000. Gym and fitness equipment is still taxed at 18%. The September 2025 reshuffle pulled plenty of sports goods down to 5%, but exercise machines were left exactly where they were. So you hand over ₹36,000 of GST on that one treadmill. In 2024 you'd have knocked that ₹36,000 off your next few GST payments. Now it just sits in your cost sheet. Same story with the GST on your rent, your software, your CA's bill, your ads.
So the cut isn't a straight win for you. For the member it genuinely is. A ₹1,200 monthly plan that used to cost them ₹1,416 all-in now costs ₹1,260. That's about ₹1,872 a year back in their pocket, which is a decent thing to say out loud at renewal time. For you, the sticker price got easier to sell and the input costs got heavier. Whether that nets out in your favour depends on how much credit you were actually claiming before.
Do you actually have to register for GST?
Not if you're small. A gym is a service business, and for services, registration becomes compulsory once your turnover in a financial year crosses ₹20 lakh. In four north-eastern states — Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura — the line is ₹10 lakh. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarakhand were taken off that list in 2019, so they use the same ₹20 lakh figure as everyone else.
₹20 lakh feels far away until you run the numbers. A gym in Indore with 150 members on a ₹1,200 monthly plan is doing ₹21.6 lakh a year. That gym has crossed. The same gym at 60 members is at ₹8.64 lakh and hasn't. Somewhere around 140 members at that price is where it flips, and most owners don't notice the month it happens.
Count everything, too, not just membership fees. Personal training packages, joining fees, locker charges, the protein you sell at the counter — it all goes into the turnover figure. If you don't know where you stand, pull last year's total collection out of your books. And if you're still adding that up from a register plus a few WhatsApp threads, fix that before it turns into a tax problem; our buyer's guide to gym billing software in India walks through what to look for.
One more thing worth ten minutes with your CA: the composition scheme for small service providers, a flat 6% up to ₹50 lakh of turnover with quarterly returns instead of monthly. Under that scheme you don't add GST to the member's bill at all. You pay 6% of your collection out of your own pocket. Against the old 18% that was often worth it. Against 5% that the member pays, it usually isn't. Don't assume it either way, but do ask.
How do you show GST on a member's bill?
This is where I see the most confusion, and it isn't really a tax question. It's a pricing question. When you tell a member "the annual plan is ₹12,000", do you mean ₹12,000 plus GST, or ₹12,000 including GST?
Both are allowed. You just have to pick one, say it clearly when you sell, and show the split on the invoice either way. Here's that same ₹12,000 annual plan done both ways, at our 150-member gym in Indore.
| Line on the invoice | You quote ₹12,000 + GST | ₹12,000 is the all-in price |
|---|---|---|
| Annual membership (taxable value) | ₹12,000.00 | ₹11,428.57 |
| CGST @ 2.5% | ₹300.00 | ₹285.72 |
| SGST @ 2.5% | ₹300.00 | ₹285.71 |
| Total the member pays | ₹12,600.00 | ₹12,000.00 |
| GST you deposit | ₹600.00 | ₹571.43 |
| What the gym keeps | ₹12,000.00 | ₹11,428.57 |
One-year membership priced at ₹12,000. Both columns are legal — you just have to decide which one you mean and be consistent about it.
Two things about that table. The 5% always shows as two halves on a local sale, 2.5% CGST and 2.5% SGST, because your member is in your state. You'd only split it the other way for a sale to another state, and a gym almost never has one.
And look at the right-hand column. If ₹12,000 is your all-in price, the tax comes out of your ₹12,000 rather than sitting on top of it. You keep ₹11,428.57 and send ₹571.43 to the government. Plenty of owners quote all-in prices to close the sale and then get a small shock at filing time. Neither approach is wrong. Quietly switching between them, sale to sale, is.
What a gym's GST invoice has to show
Rule 46 of the CGST Rules sets out what a tax invoice must carry. Most of it is common sense. A few items are the ones gyms actually get pulled up on.
- Head it "Tax Invoice" — that's the format everyone expects, and a "Receipt" slip isn't the same document
- Your gym's legal name, address and GSTIN
- An invoice number: a consecutive serial, up to 16 characters, unique within the financial year, with no gaps
- The date of the invoice
- The member's name and address — plus their GSTIN, if they have one and want it on the bill
- A plain description of what they bought, such as "Annual gym membership, 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027"
- The SAC code: 999723, "physical well-being services including health club & fitness centre". That code didn't change in September 2025 — only the rate did
- The taxable value, before tax
- CGST and SGST shown separately, each with its rate (2.5%) and its amount
- The total the member pays
- Place of supply — for a gym, that's just the state your gym is in
- A signature or digital signature
On the SAC code: if your turnover last financial year was above ₹5 crore, you have to print all six digits. Below that, four digits is the legal requirement on business-to-business invoices. Print the full 999723 anyway. It costs nothing and it stops questions.
The invoice number is the one that causes real trouble. Handwritten receipt books get reused across branches, pages get torn out, and two members end up holding invoice 214. A broken number series is the first thing anyone reviewing your books will notice. Any decent gym billing system issues the numbers for you and keeps the series clean, which is honestly the main reason to stop writing them by hand. ManageYourGym does that; so do several others, and if you're still shortlisting we went through the main options in our comparison of gym software sold in India.
Does anything change for annual plans versus monthly?
The rate doesn't. It's 5% on a ₹1,200 monthly plan, 5% on a ₹12,000 annual plan, 5% on an ₹8,000 personal training package.
What changes is when you owe it. For services, GST falls due at the earliest of three moments: the day you raise the invoice, the day you provide the service, or the day the payment reaches you. In a gym, the payment almost always lands first. So when a member pays ₹12,000 in April for a full year, the whole ₹571.43 goes into your April return. It doesn't spread itself across the twelve months they're actually using the gym.
That catches out owners who push annual prepayment discounts every January and then find January's GST payment looks alarming. Nothing has gone wrong. The money simply arrived before the service did. If your cash flow is tight in that month, plan for it instead of being surprised by it.
Advances behave the same way. A member pays ₹5,000 now and promises ₹7,000 next month: GST is due on the ₹5,000 in the month you received it. That's trivial to handle when every payment sits against the member's plan and payment history, and genuinely painful when half of it lives in a notebook.
Common questions
What is the GST rate on gym membership in India in 2026?
It is 5%, with no input tax credit for the gym. That rate has applied since 22 September 2025, when the 56th GST Council's recommendation took effect and the earlier 18% rate was withdrawn. On a local bill it appears as 2.5% CGST plus 2.5% SGST. A fair number of websites still print 18%, so check the date on anything you read.
Can a gym claim input tax credit on rent and equipment?
No. The 5% rate comes with the credit switched off, and you can't opt to pay 18% instead to get it back. GST you pay on rent, machines, electricity, software and professional fees is now a straight cost. Gym equipment itself is still taxed at 18%, so on a ₹2,00,000 treadmill that's ₹36,000 you no longer recover.
Does a small gym need GST registration?
Only once total turnover in a financial year crosses ₹20 lakh. In Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura it's ₹10 lakh. Count everything the gym earns, including personal training, joining fees and any retail sales, not just membership income. Below that line you don't charge GST and you don't file GST returns.
Is GST charged on personal training and yoga classes too?
Yes, at the same 5%. CBIC's FAQ on the 56th Council meeting groups health clubs, fitness centres and yoga under one entry, so a PT package is taxed exactly like a membership. The narrow exception is yoga run as a charitable activity by a trust registered under section 12AA or 12AB of the Income-tax Act, which is a different rule entirely — ask your CA if you think it applies to you.
Can a member claim back the GST on their gym membership?
Generally no. Membership of a club, or of a health and fitness centre, sits on the blocked-credit list under Section 17(5) of the CGST Act. So even a GST-registered company paying for an employee's gym membership usually can't take the credit. Worth knowing before you promise a corporate client otherwise.
One caveat before you act on any of this
I build gym software, I'm not a chartered accountant. Everything above is sourced — the CBIC FAQ from the 56th GST Council meeting, Rule 46 of the CGST Rules for the invoice format, Section 13 for when the tax falls due — and it was accurate on 27 July 2026. But rates move, your state may have its own wrinkles, and your numbers are yours. Treat this as the plain-English version, then run your actual situation past someone who files returns for a living.