The central government has mandated a key change that will come into effect on March 1, 2024. Businesses with an annual turnover of more than Rs 500 crore will now be required to provide e-invoices before generating e-waybills for all transactions to improve tax transparency.
As per the revised GST rules, traders are required to produce e-way bills while transporting goods worth more than Rs 50,000 crore across states. However, the upcoming changes provide that from March 1, 2024, an e-way bill can be generated only if it is accompanied by the requisite e-invoice.
The National Information Center (NIC) has clarified that this modification is exclusively for taxpayers who are eligible to use e-waybills. It is worth noting that the e-invoice requirement for generating e-waybill is applicable only for transactions involving B2B (company-to-company) and B2E (company-to-exporter). The NIC emphasizes that customers and other transaction types are not subject to the e-waybill requirement.
NICC’s analysis shows that in some cases, qualified e-invoice payers have generated e-waybills for specific transactions without linking them to e-invoices. In some cases, discrepancies between the details recorded separately under the e-waybill and the e-invoice resulted in a lack of consistency between the two.
To avoid such discrepancies, the NIC has mandated that with effect from March 1, 2024, GST taxpayers will be prohibited from generating e-way bills that do not contain e-ticket details. This shift is primarily for taxpayers engaged in trade and export related transactions.
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Notably, the GST collection for the month of December 2023 reached an impressive Rs. 1.64 billion, an annual increase of 10%. December was the seventh consecutive month in which GST collections exceeded Rs 1.60 billion, underscoring the strong growth in industrial and commercial activities in the country.