E-invoicing for reverse charge self-invoices is the change several growing businesses asked us about this fortnight, after the GST Network added two new supply-type codes to the e-invoice system: RCMDOM and RCMIMP. The headline reads like a new deadline. It is not one — yet. The facility went live in the testing (sandbox) environment on 16 October 2026, following a recommendation of the 57th meeting of the GST Council, and the GST Network has been explicit that the date on which it becomes a production requirement will be communicated separately. Read correctly, this is advance notice, not an alarm.
What e-invoicing for reverse charge self-invoices actually changes
Self-invoicing under reverse charge is not new. When a registered business buys from an unregistered supplier on which tax is payable under reverse charge, or imports a service from a supplier located outside India, it already has to raise an invoice to itself — a self-invoice — and pay the GST on that purchase directly to the government. What is changing is how those self-invoices are produced. Instead of being generated only inside your accounting software, they will be routed through the e-invoice (Invoice Registration Portal) system and carry an Invoice Reference Number, in the same way your outward B2B invoices already do. To make that possible, the system now recognises two new categories: RCMDOM, for recipient-generated self-invoices on specified domestic supplies received from unregistered persons, and RCMIMP, for self-invoices on the import of services from a supplier outside India.
Two codes, two everyday situations
The two codes map onto transactions many businesses run every month. RCMIMP is the one to watch if you pay for anything delivered as a service from abroad — overseas software subscriptions, cloud tools, a foreign consultant or designer, a marketing platform billed from outside India. Those are imports of services, and the GST on them sits on you under reverse charge. RCMDOM covers the domestic side: purchases from unregistered suppliers where reverse charge applies. If either is a regular feature of your books, this facility will eventually be the route through which you document that tax.
Why route a self-invoice through the portal at all? The reason is traceability. A reverse-charge purchase is one of the few places in GST where the person who pays the tax is also the person claiming the credit on it, with no supplier invoice on the system to match against. Putting the self-invoice through the e-invoice portal gives that transaction the same registered, numbered footprint as every other invoice — which is precisely why the GST Council recommended extending e-invoicing to it. For you, the practical gain is a cleaner audit trail on exactly the entries that tend to get questioned.
| Code | What it covers | Who raises it |
|---|---|---|
| RCMDOM | Self-invoices for specified domestic supplies received from unregistered persons, where tax is payable under reverse charge | The registered recipient (you) |
| RCMIMP | Self-invoices for the import of services from a supplier located outside India | The registered recipient (you) |
| Regular e-invoice | Your outward B2B supplies, already on the e-invoice system | The supplier |
Why “a capability, not an obligation” is the whole point
The facility is presently available only in the sandbox — the testing environment — across all six authorised Invoice Registration Portals, including the two run by the National Informatics Centre alongside Cygnet, Clear, EY and IRIS. The GST Network has said the production rollout and the start of the associated reporting requirement will be announced in due course. In plain terms: today you cannot have missed anything, because there is nothing live to miss. The sandbox exists so that businesses and their software providers can build and test the integration before it is switched on in production.
There is no deadline attached to this today. The risk is not a penalty — it is discovering, on the day the production date is notified, that your billing or e-invoicing software cannot yet raise an RCMDOM or RCMIMP document. The quiet work now is a vendor conversation, not a filing.
Who it is aimed at
The facility is intended for taxpayers already within the e-invoicing net — broadly, those with aggregate annual turnover at or above the current e-invoicing threshold of five crore rupees. If e-invoicing already applies to your outward supplies, assume reverse-charge self-invoicing through the portal will apply to you too once it is notified, and confirm the exact scope on the GST portal when the production date is announced.
What to do now, while it is still optional
Three steps cost nothing and remove the scramble later. First, map your reverse-charge transactions — list the imported services you subscribe to and the categories of unregistered-supplier purchases on which you already self-account for GST. You cannot prepare for a reporting change you have not inventoried. Second, raise it with whoever runs your e-invoicing: your accounting software vendor or IRP integrator. Ask a direct question — will the product support RCMDOM and RCMIMP, and will it be ready before the production date. Third, keep doing exactly what the current law requires: raise your reverse-charge self-invoices the usual way and pay the tax on time. The e-invoice route is an additional channel being built, not a replacement that is live.
The pattern here is the same one that ran through e-invoicing from the start and through the Invoice Management System this year: the compliance work keeps moving earlier and into the system, and the businesses that fare best are the ones that treat the advisory as a planning signal rather than waiting for the deadline. For reverse-charge self-invoices, that signal has just been sent.