E-way bill limit in Kerala: no bill, unless it is gold
Ordinary goods moving inside Kerala need no e-way bill at any value. Gold, precious metals, pearls, precious stones and jewellery other than imitation jewellery do, at a consignment value of ₹10 lakh and above. The figure comes from Notification No. 10/2024-State Tax dated 27 December 2024, in force from 20 January 2025, effective 20 January 2025. Kerala is the one state where the ordinary answer is that no e-way bill is needed. Ordinary goods moving inside Kerala do not require one at any value. The exception is Chapter 71 goods — gold, precious metals, pearls, precious stones and jewellery other than imitation jewellery — which need one at a consignment value of ₹10 lakh and above.
Frequently asked questions
What is the e-way bill limit in Kerala?
There is effectively no general limit, because ordinary goods moving inside Kerala need no e-way bill at any value. Chapter 71 goods — gold, precious metals, pearls, precious stones and jewellery other than imitation jewellery — need one at ₹10 lakh and above, since 20 January 2025.
Do I need an e-way bill for ₹40,000 of gold from Kochi to Kozhikode?
No. ₹40,000 of gold is below the ₹10 lakh threshold Kerala applies to Chapter 71 goods, and ordinary goods would need no bill at any value.
What if the same consignment goes from Kochi to Tamil Nadu instead?
That one needs an e-way bill. Crossing into Tamil Nadu makes it an inter-state movement, and inter-state movement is tested at ₹50,000 regardless of which state it started in or what that state's own intra-state threshold is. This is the mistake state thresholds cause most often: the state figure is remembered as if it were national, when it only governs movement that never leaves Kerala.
Which goods are exempt in Kerala?
Kerala is the one state where the ordinary answer is that no e-way bill is needed. Ordinary goods moving inside Kerala do not require one at any value. The exception is Chapter 71 goods — gold, precious metals, pearls, precious stones and jewellery other than imitation jewellery — which need one at a consignment value of ₹10 lakh and above. The exemption is separate from the value threshold rather than part of it, so the question for an exempt category is what the notification says about that category, not what the consignment is worth. Confirm against the notification before relying on it at a check post.
How many days of validity does a Kerala consignment get?
Validity is national rather than state-specific, so a bill for goods moving from Kochi to Kozhikode follows the same rule as anywhere else: one day for up to 200 km and one additional day for every 200 km or part of it, counted from generation and expiring at midnight of the day after generation. Over-dimensional cargo, and multimodal shipments with at least one leg by ship, get one day per 20 km. The distance that counts is the PIN-to-PIN distance the portal computes between the dispatch and destination PIN codes — not the road distance the transporter quotes — so a route that looks like two days on the highway can still be billed as three.
What value does Kerala test — the invoice total or the taxable value?
The consignment value declared on the invoice, bill of supply or delivery challan, including CGST, SGST, IGST and cess. Where one invoice covers both taxable and exempt goods, the exempt line comes out of the figure. For a Kerala movement the number to compare against the threshold is therefore the document total, not the taxable value alone and not what the goods would fetch if resold — and because it is a document test, it is the figure a check-post officer reads off the paperwork rather than the one in your head.
Does the GST state code matter for a Kerala consignment?
Kerala is GST state code 32, the first two digits of every GSTIN issued there. It matters because the code on the supplier's GSTIN has to match the place of supply for the tax split to be right, and a mismatch is one of the things that turns a routine check-post stop into a longer one.