Raisins HSN code and GST

Where raisins sit in the HSN schedule

The Harmonised System puts grapes in chapter 8, edible fruit and nuts. Heading 0806 is grapes, fresh or dried. Inside it, fresh grapes go to 0806 10 and dried grapes go to 0806 20.

Every raisin is a dried grape. That sounds trivially obvious until somebody in an accounts department decides that golden raisins must be a different commodity from black because they cost more and look nothing like each other. They are not. Colour, drying method, grade, size and price do not move the classification. A premium select green lot and a commercial black lot are the same tariff line.

Because trade names vary by region and language, the safe practice on any invoice is to state the HSN alongside a plain description of the goods rather than relying on the local word. Kismis, kishmish, kali kismis, manuka, sultana and raisin will all be understood differently by different people, and the code is the part nobody argues with.

GST on raisins and how to confirm the current rate

We do not print a percentage on this page, and that is deliberate.

Dried fruit and nut lines have sat in the lower GST slabs since 2017, and the rate applying to dried grapes has been looked at more than once in the years since. Rate schedules are amended by notification, they are amended with effect from a stated date, and a page like this one being read eleven months after it was written is exactly how a buyer ends up filing against a number that stopped applying in March. A raisin supplier is not the right source for that figure.

The right sources are two. Your own chartered accountant or GST practitioner, who knows the nature of your supply and whether anything about it changes the answer. Or the current rate notification published by the CBIC, read at the date you are filing rather than at the date somebody quoted it to you.

What you can take from this page is the classification, which is stable, and the invoice discipline, which is under your control.

What a compliant raisin invoice should carry

Most of the buyers who land on this page are doing one of two things: setting a new supplier up in their ERP, or reconciling input credit and finding that the goods description changed between the second dispatch and the fifth. Both problems are solved the same way, by fixing the description per grade at the start and never touching it again.

Our bills carry the lines below on every bulk dispatch. If your accounts team needs a particular description format or an internal item code on the face of the invoice, say so at quotation stage. Changing it three dispatches in means your records show two conventions for one product, and somebody will spend an afternoon reconciling that instead of doing their job.

Four digits, six or eight

A question we get more often than the rate itself. How many digits of the HSN do you have to print.

The answer is turnover based under the GST rules, and the thresholds have been tightened since the tax was introduced, so the number of digits a small trader had to report in 2018 is not necessarily what the same trader reports now. Your advisor or your filing software will tell you which band you fall in. For dried grapes the practical effect is small either way, because the line runs 0806, then 0806 20, and then to an eight digit tariff item beneath that.

What matters more in practice is consistency. Report the same code at the same depth on every invoice for the same goods. Mixed depths across a year of purchases from the same supplier is the kind of thing that generates a query nobody needed.

Classification mistakes we see

Three come up regularly, and all three are in the buyer's accounts department rather than in the goods.

The first is treating munakka as something other than a dried grape. It is a dried grape, seeded and dried differently, and it classifies with the rest. It is genuinely a different product in the kitchen, which is why we keep kismis and munakka separated on the retail side, but that difference is culinary and not tariff.

The second is assuming sultanas and currants sit somewhere else because the English words are different. They do not. All three of raisins, sultanas and currants are dried grapes, as set out in what actually separates raisins from sultanas.

The third is the one worth watching. A mixed dry fruit pack containing raisins alongside almonds, cashew and pista is not a dried grape. Combinations and preparations classify on their own merits, and if you are repacking a mixed product rather than reselling raisins as raisins, that is a question for your advisor before you print your first pouch, not after.

Transport documents and dispatch

Bulk consignments move ex-Tasgaon by courier for smaller quantities and by transport lorry above that. The consignment travels with the invoice, the transporter's document or courier docket, and an e-way bill where the value and movement require one under the current rules.

The e-way bill threshold and the interstate rules are again a matter for your advisor or your filing software rather than for us, but the practical point at your end is simple: the goods description and the HSN on the e-way bill should match the invoice exactly. Where they do not, the mismatch is usually because somebody typed a friendlier description into the portal.

Freight is quoted separately from the rate, which is part of why we quote ex-Tasgaon at all. The rest of the commercial process, from sample to dispatch, is on the bulk buying workflow.

Why buyers ask for the kismis HSN code

Almost nobody searching for a kismis HSN code is curious about tariff schedules. They are onboarding a supplier, or they are a new food manufacturer setting up item masters, or they are a distributor whose accountant has flagged an inconsistency across a year of bills.

What those buyers actually need from a supplier is two things and neither of them is tax advice. A stable goods description per grade, and a bill that reconciles to the cartons that arrived. We hold the description fixed per grade and batch mark the outers, and where a buyer needs the specification on file as well, the format is on the specification sheet we quote against.

Ingredient buyers with formal QA and documentation requirements should also look at what food manufacturers usually ask for, which covers batch traceability and continuity of supply alongside the paperwork.

For rates, MOQ, sample terms and dispatch, everything sits together on the main wholesale page, and today's number for a named grade comes from the bulk rate page.