The TCS on your payout is your money. Most sellers never claim it.
Every marketplace deducts Tax Collected at Source on your sales and deposits it against your GSTIN. It is not a fee — it is reclaimable credit. Here is how it works and why it so often goes uncollected.
- TCS = Tax Collected at Source. The marketplace collects a small % of your sales and deposits it.
- It is NOT a cost — it is your money, held against your GSTIN, reclaimable as credit at filing.
- Across a year the cumulative amount is significant. Leaving it unclaimed is a real loss.
- Claiming requires reconciling marketplace-reported TCS against your own sales records.
- Robnu reconciles TCS across every marketplace so the credit is captured. Free while we figure out pricing.
Of every line on a marketplace settlement, TCS is the one sellers most often misunderstand — and the misunderstanding costs them money that was always theirs. This guide corrects it: what TCS is, where it goes, and how to get it back.
Every Indian marketplace deducts Tax Collected at Source on your sales. It is not a cost — it is your money, deposited against your GSTIN and reclaimable at filing. This guide explains how it works and why most sellers lose it, because the TCS on your payout is the single most misunderstood line on a marketplace settlement.
A deduction that is not a cost
On your settlement, TCS looks exactly like every other deduction — a number subtracted before your payout arrives. That appearance is misleading. Commission is gone; TCS is parked. It has been deposited with the tax authority against your GSTIN, waiting for you to claim it. The mental shift is from “the marketplace took this” to “the marketplace moved this into my tax credit account.” Once you see it that way, not claiming it is obviously leaving your own money behind. Across a year the cumulative amount is significant.
Why it goes uncollected
Claiming TCS is not automatic. It requires matching what each marketplace reported as collected against your own record of sales on that platform, then claiming the credit at filing. When the two do not match — timing differences, returns handled inconsistently, a wrong GSTIN — the claim does not flow cleanly. For a seller on three marketplaces, that is three sets of reported TCS to reconcile, every period. It is precise, repetitive, unglamorous work — exactly the kind that gets deferred until the credit is effectively lost. See TCS and GST for the wider picture.
Capturing the credit that is already yours
The barrier to reclaiming TCS is not eligibility — it is the reconciliation between what marketplaces report and what you actually sold. That is a data problem, and data problems are what software solves. Our reconciliation matches the TCS each marketplace reported against your GSTIN with your sales records, surfaces mismatches before they block a claim, and gives you a clean consolidated view of the credit sitting against your registration — so it gets claimed rather than forfeited. See GSTR-1 from marketplace reports for the report-to-return workflow.
The bigger picture for your catalogue
Whatever the specific status, charge or process, the underlying reality of selling on Indian marketplaces is the same. The platforms are built to move enormous volume, their interfaces speak in operational shorthand rather than plain language, and the money at stake hides in charges that arrive as silent settlement deductions requiring no approval from you. The sellers who stay profitable are not the ones who avoid every problem — that is impossible at scale — but the ones who understand what each event means, know which charges are genuinely owed, and reconcile every settlement so the wrong ones are caught and reclaimed while the claim window is still open.
That discipline is simple to describe and hard to sustain by hand, because it is precise, repetitive work layered on top of actually running the business. It is exactly the kind of task that a two-person team does inconsistently under volume and that software does reliably every cycle. Robnu exists to close that gap: it runs the daily operations these guides describe, reconciles the charges they represent against what you actually shipped and sold, and files the claims you are entitled to — so the vocabulary becomes something handled rather than something you have to master and police yourself. You sell; Robnu runs the rest, and makes sure every rupee is paid correctly.
Sources & further reading
Charges, policies and processes vary by marketplace and category and change over time. The details here are drawn from official documentation and reputable industry sources; always confirm current specifics against your own seller panel and settlement reports:
A deduction that is not a cost
On your settlement, TCS looks exactly like every other deduction — a number subtracted before your payout arrives. That appearance is misleading. Commission is gone; TCS is parked. It has been deposited with the tax authority against your GSTIN, waiting for you to claim it.
The mental shift is from “the marketplace took this” to “the marketplace moved this into my tax credit account.” Once you see it that way, not claiming it is obviously leaving your own money behind.
The reconciliation nobody does
Claiming TCS is not automatic. It requires matching what each marketplace reported as collected against your own record of sales on that platform, then claiming the credit at filing. When the two do not match — timing differences, returns handled inconsistently, a wrong GSTIN — the claim does not flow cleanly.
For a seller on three marketplaces, that is three sets of reported TCS to reconcile, every period. It is precise, repetitive, unglamorous work — exactly the kind that gets deferred until the credit is effectively lost.
Capturing the credit that is already yours
The barrier to reclaiming TCS is not eligibility — it is the reconciliation between what marketplaces report and what you actually sold. That reconciliation is a data problem, and data problems are what software solves.
Robnu is an agentic OMS running AJIO, Meesho and Amazon today. It reconciles the TCS each marketplace reported against your sales records, surfaces mismatches before they block a claim, and gives you a clean, consolidated view of the credit sitting against your GSTIN — so it gets claimed rather than forfeited.
You sell. Robnu runs the rest — and makes sure every rupee is paid correctly.
Marketplace TCS, answered
TCS is Tax Collected at Source. Under the GST framework, e-commerce operators are required to collect a small percentage of the net value of taxable supplies made through them and deposit it with the government against the seller's GSTIN. It is a collection mechanism, not an additional tax — the amount is credited to you and reclaimable.
No, and this is the single most important thing to understand about it. TCS is your own money, held with the tax authority against your GSTIN. It behaves like a temporary deduction on your payout, but it is fully reclaimable as credit when you file your GST returns. Treating it as a cost — or ignoring it — is how sellers permanently lose money that was always theirs.
It is a small percentage of the net taxable value of your sales through the marketplace, applied per the prevailing GST rules. The exact rate is set by the framework rather than the marketplace. Across a year of sales the cumulative amount is significant, which is why leaving it unclaimed is a real loss rather than a rounding error.
The TCS collected against your GSTIN appears in your GST records, and you claim it as credit when filing your returns by reconciling what the marketplace reported with your own sales. The reconciliation step is where the credit is either captured or lost — if the reported figures and your records do not match, the credit does not flow cleanly.
Because claiming it requires reconciling marketplace-reported TCS against your own sales records at filing time, and many small sellers either do not file rigorously or do not realise the deposited amount is theirs to reclaim. The money sits as credit that is never drawn down, quietly turning a temporary deduction into a permanent one.
A mismatch between the marketplace's reported TCS and your own sales records blocks a clean claim. Common causes are timing differences across periods, returns and cancellations handled inconsistently, or an incorrect GSTIN on the seller account. Reconciling per period is what surfaces and resolves these before they cost you the credit.
The TCS from every marketplace is deposited against the same GSTIN, so it consolidates at the registration level, but each marketplace reports its own figures that you must reconcile against your sales on that platform. If you sell on AJIO, Meesho and Amazon, that is three sets of reported TCS to match — more surface area for a mismatch to hide in.
No. TCS is Tax Collected at Source, collected by the marketplace on your sales. TDS is Tax Deducted at Source, a separate mechanism. Both may appear on your settlement and both are reclaimable in their respective ways, but they are different line items with different treatments — worth distinguishing when you reconcile.
Related seller guides
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