Four slabs. That is the whole game.
On 22 September 2025 the 56th GST Council did something the tax deserved: it deleted two slabs. The 12% and 28% rates are gone. What is left is 0, 5, 18 and 40 — plus the two special rates that were always odd, 3% on gold and 0.25% on rough diamonds.
Which sounds simple, and mostly is, until you are asked to place an actual item. Cement fell. Shampoo fell. Aerated drinks went up, into a new demerit slab that also holds tobacco and firearms. Most people who deal with GST every day still guess the old rate, because the old rate is the one they typed a thousand times.
Where the answers come from
Every rate in this game is read from the same HSN dataset that powers the GST Rate Finder. Nothing is typed in by hand. If the dataset is right the game is right, and if a rate changes the game changes with it — which is the only honest way to run a quiz about a tax that keeps moving.
Items whose sub-codes carry different rates are left out rather than guessed at. So are alcohol and petroleum products: they sit outside GST entirely and are taxed by the states, which is not the same thing as a zero rate. This is general awareness material. For a live rate on a specific supply, use the Rate Finder and check the HSN.