HSN Code for Air Conditioners and Cooling Appliances

The AC HSN code is 8415. That heading covers air conditioning machines comprising a motor-driven fan and elements for changing the temperature and humidity, including machines in which the humidity cannot be separately regulated — which is the tariff's way of saying that if the appliance both moves air and conditions it, it belongs here. Split, window, cassette, ducted and tower units all sit under the same four-digit heading; they only separate further down the code.

What trips people up is not the heading itself but its neighbours. Fans live in 8414, refrigerators and chillers in 8418, and evaporative "desert" coolers in 8479 — three different places, none of them 8415. This page walks the boundaries.

The AC HSN code starts at heading 8415

Classification under GST follows the Customs Tariff, which in turn follows the World Customs Organization's Harmonized System. Air conditioners sit in Chapter 84 — nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances — and within it at heading 8415. The heading text is worth reading closely, because it is the text, not the marketing name on the box, that decides the code:

Air conditioning machines, comprising a motor-driven fan and elements for changing the temperature and humidity, including those machines in which the humidity cannot be separately regulated.

Two conditions have to be met together. There must be a motor-driven fan, and there must be elements that change temperature and humidity. The closing clause matters commercially: almost no domestic air conditioner lets you set humidity independently, and that clause is what keeps ordinary room ACs inside the heading anyway. Conversely, an appliance that only does one of the two things — moves air without conditioning it, or cools without a fan — falls out of 8415 and has to be classified somewhere else.

If the four-digit / six-digit / eight-digit hierarchy is unfamiliar, our explainer on how HSN codes are structured covers what each level of the code means and how many digits you are obliged to print.

Inside 8415: split, window, cassette and car ACs

The single most common question — "is the split AC HSN code different from the window AC HSN code?" — has a slightly anticlimactic answer. At the six-digit level they are the same. Subheading 8415 10 is described as window or wall types, self-contained or split-system, which deliberately puts both product formats in one bucket. The Indian tariff subdivides that subheading at the eight-digit level, with split systems separated from the rest, so a distinction does exist — it just only appears if you are quoting eight digits.

Subheading	Covers	Typical products
8415 10	Window or wall types, self-contained or split-system	Room split AC, window AC, wall-mounted inverter unit
8415 20	Of a kind used for persons, in motor vehicles	Car and bus air conditioning units
8415 81	Other, incorporating a refrigerating unit and a valve for reversal of the cooling / heat cycle	Reversible heat-pump machines that both heat and cool
8415 82	Other, incorporating a refrigerating unit (no reversing valve)	Cooling-only ducted, packaged and cassette machines
8415 83	Other, not incorporating a refrigerating unit	Air handling units fed by chilled water from a separate plant
8415 90	Parts	Indoor / outdoor unit sold as a part, PCBs, coils for 8415 machines

Cassette and ducted units are the ones people most often misfile. They are not window or wall types, so they do not sit in 8415 10; they belong in the "other" group, and the question then becomes whether the machine carries its own refrigerating unit. A self-contained cassette with its own condensing unit does, so it lands in 8415 82 — or 8415 81 if it is a reversible heat pump that can run in heating mode. An air handling unit that has no compressor of its own and simply blows air over a coil fed by a central chiller does not, and falls in 8415 83.

The headings people confuse with 8415

Most AC classification errors are not errors within 8415 — they are an appliance that never belonged in 8415 being pushed into it because "it makes the room cooler". The tariff draws its lines by mechanism, not by outcome.

Heading	Scope	Why it is not 8415
8414	Air and vacuum pumps, air and gas compressors, fans, ventilating and recycling hoods	A fan moves air; it does not change its temperature or humidity, so the second limb of 8415 fails.
8415	Air conditioning machines	—
8418	Refrigerators, freezers, other refrigerating or freezing equipment, and heat pumps other than air conditioning machines of 8415	The heading text itself defers to 8415: if the machine is an air conditioning machine, 8415 wins.
8479	Machines and mechanical appliances having individual functions, not specified elsewhere in Chapter 84	Residual heading. Evaporative air coolers are named here explicitly.

The 8418 boundary deserves a note because the heading text does half the work for you. Heading 8418 covers heat pumps "other than air conditioning machines of heading 8415" — an explicit exclusion, so a reversible room AC that also heats is still 8415 (specifically 8415 81), not 8418. Refrigerators, deep freezers, visi coolers and stand-alone water chillers, none of which condition room air, stay in 8418.

Why desert coolers are not in 8415 at all

An evaporative air cooler draws air across a water-soaked pad. The water evaporates, the evaporation absorbs heat, and the air leaving the cooler is cooler and considerably more humid than the air entering it. There is no compressor, no refrigerant and no refrigerating circuit anywhere in the machine — and it adds humidity rather than controlling it.

The Harmonized System handles this by naming evaporative air coolers explicitly in subheading 8479 60, under the residual heading for machines and mechanical appliances having individual functions not specified elsewhere in the chapter. That is a genuinely different heading from 8415, which means a different rate entry may apply. Do not carry an AC's code across to a cooler on a shared invoice line because the two products sit next to each other in your catalogue — check both.

Two related products worth separating out while you are at it. A room air purifier filters particulates and does not condition air; filtering and purifying apparatus for gases is dealt with in heading 8421, not 8415. A stand-alone dehumidifier is a harder call and turns on its construction — if it works by passing air over a refrigerated coil it may be argued into 8415, and the safe route is to check the classification against the section and chapter notes rather than assume.

Parts, compressors and outdoor units

Parts of air conditioning machines have their own residual subheading, 8415 90, and that is where indoor and outdoor units, coils, control PCBs and similar components go when they are supplied as parts rather than as a complete machine. The catch is Note 2 to Section XVI, which governs parts across Chapters 84 and 85: a part that is itself goods included in a heading of Chapter 84 or 85 is classified in its own heading, not as a part of the machine it goes into.

The practical consequence shows up with compressors. A compressor of a kind used in refrigerating equipment is specifically covered in heading 8414, so a compressor sold on its own is classified there — not in 8415 90 — even though it is destined for an air conditioner. The same logic sends AC motors to Chapter 85 and copper tubing to Chapter 74. Only parts that have no heading of their own fall back to 8415 90.

Installation and annual maintenance are a separate question again. Those are services, not goods, and they carry a SAC rather than an HSN — see our SAC code list for services. If you sell the machine and the installation together as a package, look hard at whether you are making a composite supply with the AC as the principal supply, because that determines which code and which rate applies to the whole invoice value.

The GST rate on air conditioners after the 2025 reform

Air conditioners sat in the old 28% bracket for years, which made them one of the most visible items in the GST 2.0 rate rationalisation effective 22 September 2025. ACs were widely reported as among the goods moving from 28% to 18% in that reform, alongside other large household appliances. Our guide to the current GST rate slabs covers the structure — 0, 5, 18 and 40 — and the reasoning behind it.

One habit is worth building regardless of what the rate is this month: rates are notified against HSN codes, not against product names. "Air conditioner" is not a rate entry; a tariff line is. If your ERP rate master still carries 28% against an 8415 line, that is a live billing error, and it is exactly the kind of stale mapping the reform left behind in a lot of systems. Confirm the entry for your specific code on the CBIC GST portal before you update the master.

Input tax credit on an office air conditioner

Section 17(5) of the CGST Act lists the supplies on which input tax credit is blocked. Air conditioners are not on that list as a product category, so the ordinary rule applies: if the AC is used in the course or furtherance of business and the other conditions in section 16 are met — you hold a tax invoice, you have received the goods, and your supplier has actually paid the tax and reported the invoice — the credit is available. A split unit bought for a meeting room and capitalised as a business asset is a routine claim.

The difficulty is with centralised systems. Clause (d) of section 17(5) blocks credit on goods and services received for construction of an immovable property on one's own account, including when the cost is capitalised, with a carve-out for plant and machinery. Where an HVAC system is embedded in a building — ducting through walls, chillers on foundations, the whole installation forming part of the structure — tax authorities frequently treat it as falling on the wrong side of that line. This has been contested for years, went to the Supreme Court, and was then addressed by a legislative amendment to the wording of the plant-and-machinery carve-out. It is a genuinely unsettled area rather than a rule of thumb, so get advice on a large HVAC contract before you claim.

Practically, a few things separate a clean claim from a contested one:

• Free-standing, movable units — window, split, cassette, portable — are much easier to defend than anything built into the fabric of a building.
• Keep the goods and the installation service separately identified on the invoice where they are genuinely separate supplies; a single lumpsum works-contract invoice invites the immovable-property argument.
• Credit still depends on the supplier doing their part. The invoice has to appear in your GSTR-2B, which means the vendor's GSTIN has to be active and their filings current — the general eligibility conditions are set out in our input tax credit rules guide.
• A purely residential or personal-use AC bought on the company's GSTIN is not used in the course of business, and claiming it is a straightforward disallowance.

The vendor-side check is the one most AP teams skip. Before you book a large capital purchase, verifying that the supplier's GSTIN is active and not suspended costs one API call, and it is a great deal cheaper than reversing the credit with interest eighteen months later.

Getting the code onto the invoice and into GSTR-1

How many digits you print depends on aggregate annual turnover, not on the product. Under Notification 78/2020-Central Tax, a taxpayer with aggregate annual turnover up to ₹5 crore in the preceding financial year quotes four digits and above ₹5 crore quotes six; exports and certain notified goods require eight regardless. For most domestic AC sales that means 8415 or 8415 10 on the invoice, which is why the split-versus-window distinction usually never surfaces at all.

The same codes then have to reconcile in the Table 12 HSN summary of your GSTR-1. Since that table moved to a dropdown-based selection rather than free text, a code that does not exist in the tariff will simply be rejected at entry — which is useful, because it catches typos, but it does nothing about a code that is valid and wrong. A cooler booked under 8415 will pass validation happily and still be misclassified.

Three checks worth building into the routine:

1. Map each SKU to a code once, deliberately, against the tariff text — not by copying whatever the previous invoice said.
2. Re-check codes whenever the product changes materially. A model that gains a reversing valve and now heats as well as cools has moved from 8415 82 to 8415 81.
3. Reconcile the Table 12 summary against your sales register each period. Value sitting under a code you do not sell is the fastest way to spot a mis-mapped SKU.

Classification is ultimately a legal question decided by the tariff, its section and chapter notes, and the General Rules for the Interpretation of the Harmonized System — in that order. Where a product genuinely sits on a boundary, an advance ruling is a better answer than a confident guess.

Frequently asked questions

What is the HSN code for an air conditioner?

Air conditioning machines sit under heading 8415 of the tariff. Window and wall types and self-contained split systems fall in subheading 8415 10, ACs designed for persons in motor vehicles in 8415 20, and larger machines in the 8415 81 / 8415 82 / 8415 83 group depending on whether they include a refrigerating unit and a reversing valve. Parts of air conditioning machines fall in 8415 90.

Is the HSN code different for split AC and window AC?

Not at the four- or six-digit level. Both are covered by heading 8415 and by subheading 8415 10, which the tariff describes as window or wall types, self-contained or split-system. The Indian tariff separates them only at the eight-digit level, so the difference shows up on an invoice only if your turnover requires eight digits, which is rare for domestic supplies.

What is the HSN code for an air cooler?

An evaporative air cooler — the desert cooler that pulls air across a wet pad — is not an air conditioning machine. It is classified as an evaporative air cooler under subheading 8479 60, in the residual heading for machines having individual functions. It has no refrigerating circuit, so it fails the basic test for heading 8415.

What is the GST rate on air conditioners in 2026?

Air conditioners were among the goods reported as moving out of the old 28% bracket to 18% in the GST 2.0 rate reform effective 22 September 2025. Rates are notified against HSN codes rather than product names, so confirm the current entry for your exact code on cbic-gst.gov.in before you bill.

Can I claim input tax credit on an air conditioner bought for my office?

A free-standing window, split or cassette unit bought as a business asset is generally eligible input tax credit, because section 17(5) does not block air conditioners as a category. The problem arises with centralised HVAC installed as part of a building, which tax authorities commonly treat as construction of immovable property under section 17(5)(d). Take advice before capitalising a large HVAC contract.

Is a ceiling fan under the same HSN code as an AC?

No. Fans are in heading 8414, not 8415, because a fan only moves air — it does not change its temperature or humidity. A ceiling, table, wall or window fan falls in the 8414 51 group when its self-contained motor output does not exceed 125 W, with larger fans in 8414 59.