GST AAR Conflict Atlas #1: Hostel, PG and Residential Renting

GST Advance Rulings on hostel, PG and residential renting: where the rulings conflict. This is the first monthly edition of the GST AAR Conflict Atlas. It reads the published rulings on one question and reports, in aggregate, where they agree and where they split.

Edition 1 · 10 November 2026 · version 1.0. Aggregate only: no applicant, bench, member, firm or professional is named, and no state is singled out. Corrections, if any, are logged at the end of this page.

The question

Is renting residential premises, a hostel or PG-type accommodation exempt from GST? Rulings answer this under three entries of Notification No. 12/2017-Central Tax (Rate), dated 28.06.2017: entry 12 ("residential dwelling"), entry 14 (per-day tariff), and a later entry 12A.

The law the rulings apply

• Entry 12, as first notified: Heading 9963 or 9972, "Services by way of renting of residential dwelling for use as residence", Nil rate. (Notification No. 12/2017-Central Tax (Rate), entry 12.)
• Entry 14, as first notified: Heading 9963, "Services by a hotel, inn, guest house, club or campsite, by whatever name called, for residential or lodging purposes, having declared tariff of a unit of accommodation below one thousand rupees per day or equivalent", Nil rate. (Same notification, entry 14.)
• The July 2022 change: Notification No. 04/2022-Central Tax (Rate), dated 13.07.2022, inserted in entry 12, after "as residence", the words "except where the residential dwelling is rented to a registered person" (para 1(A)(b)), and omitted entry 14 (para 1(A)(c)). It applies "with effect from the 18th July, 2022" (para 2).
• Why rulings can differ: an advance ruling is binding only on the applicant who sought it and on the concerned or jurisdictional officer in respect of that applicant. (Section 103(1)(a) and (b), CGST Act, 2017.) So conflicting rulings can stand side by side.

What was read

Within the 67 merits rulings, one authority issued 46 near-identical rulings within one week in 2023 on the same question, all holding the service not exempt under entry 12. Counting them as 46 separate votes would make one run of orders look like a national consensus. They are therefore reported separately, and every figure below excludes that run unless it says otherwise.

Results (21 merits rulings, excluding the 2023 run)

Including the 2023 run, the not-exempt count is 57 of 67.

By ruling date, against the 18 July 2022 change:

By the entry relied on: entry 12: 3 exempt, 4 not exempt, 1 split · entry 14: 4 exempt, 4 not exempt · entries 12 and 14 together: 1 split · entry 12A: 1 exempt subject to conditions · entry not stated in the ruling: 3 not exempt.

Where the rulings conflict

• Is it a "residential dwelling"? Rulings relying on entry 12 split 3 exempt (all before 18 July 2022) against 4 not exempt (2 before, 2 after), with the 2023 run of 46 also on the not-exempt side. Where a not-exempt ruling states its reason, the reason is that the service is an accommodation service under SAC 9963 / 996311, not renting of a residential dwelling.
• The entry-14 per-day test. Four rulings allowed entry-14 exemption where the value was under ₹1,000 per day; four refused it, three of them because food and other services made the bundle a mixed supply taxed at the highest rate. Two of the four refusals are one ruling and the appeal that upheld it, so the refusals cover three matters. Entry 14 was omitted from 18 July 2022 (Notification No. 04/2022-Central Tax (Rate), paras 1(A)(c) and 2), so this conflict matters only for periods before that date.
• Composite or mixed supply? For the same bundle (accommodation with food or amenities), one line of rulings treats it as a composite supply whose principal supply is accommodation; another treats it as a mixed supply taxed at the highest rate.
• The time dimension. After 18 July 2022, no ruling outside the 2023 run granted an unconditional entry-12 exemption for the whole period asked about. Two split the answer, by length of stay or by the period before and after the July 2022 change; one allowed exemption only under the later entry 12A, subject to conditions.
• Who the recipient is and how the premises are used. Three rulings turned on whether the recipient was a government department, whether the premises were put to commercial use, or whether an educational-institution route applied. All three held the service not exempt.

What this edition does not cover

• Recall is not measured. Rulings whose index summary does not use the screen's keywords (hostel, dwelling, PG, dormitory, residential accommodation, co-living) are missed.
• Recent uploads. Eight PDF links that appeared on the index after 25 Oct 2026 were not read. Rulings published since then may be missing.
• Appellate rulings. Only the two appeals on the merits found by the keyword screen are counted. Tribunal (CESTAT) and High Court decisions are not covered.
• Entry 12A. The text of entry 12A and of the notification that inserted it was not verified for this edition. The Atlas reports only that one ruling relied on it.
• Machine-read text. Outcome codes were extracted from each ruling's own text and checked against it. Most texts came from OCR of scanned orders. The reasoning categories in the conflict section are the editor's reading of each ruling and are not checked by the script.

Method

• Define the question and the universe first. One question, one official source (the GST Council AAR/AAAR index), one stated collection window, and a coverage path: listed → retrieved → extracted → coded → checked.
• Keep an evidence trail for each code. Every outcome is tied to a verbatim passage cut from the ruling's own text, with its page. A script re-checks that each passage is present in its source and carries the words that match the coded outcome, and that no passage contains a party name. The last run checked 78 passages with 0 failures.
• Code with a written rulebook. Outcome (exempt / exempt with conditions / split / not exempt / not on merits), the entry relied on, and the reasoning type are defined before coding.
• Aggregate only. Counts and patterns are published; individual rulings, parties, benches and members are not named or ranked, and case text is not reproduced.
• Separate observation from legal meaning. A count of rulings is not a statement of the law, a forecast of how an authority will rule, or a measure of anyone's merit. Each statement of law above cites its source.

Corrections

Corrections are logged here, never made silently. Each entry names the claim changed, the version affected, the authority for the change and the date.

Disclaimer

This page is general information, not professional advice. Reading it does not create a chartered accountant–client relationship. Advance rulings bind only the applicant and the jurisdictional officer concerned (section 103(1), CGST Act, 2017). Whether a supply is exempt depends on its own facts and on the law in force for the period in question.

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