GST E-invoicing May be Optional for Banks, Telcos, Airlines & More

It is highly anticipated that the government’s tax-evasion measure through mandatory e-invoicing under GST will not be applied to airlines, banks, insurance companies, telecom service providers and armed forces. Companies like airlines, telecom service providers which have direct communication with clients on a huge scale are anticipated to keep out of mandatory e-invoicing purview i.e. it would not be mandatory for them to file GST e-invoice Get to know about the new E-invoice generation system on government GST portal with applicability. The system mandates to generate e-invoice for every sale by a registered business.

One of the persons with knowledge about the matter said, “Banks, airlines, telcos and other entities that have direct customer interaction on a large scale may be exempted from filing their e-invoices under GST.”

Another person expressed his views about the same saying that such exemptions would have to specifically mentioned by the government through a notification in the norms.

Under the circumstances, when the government’s intention to boost the GST collection by augmenting the GST rate slabs Grab the information of revised GST slab rates on consumer products in India, Although GST council finalized the slab rates like 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% was not supported by many states, the government drifted all its focus towards tax-evasion measures of which e-invoicing is a crucial element.

Mandatory e-invoicing will come into effect for certain categories for business from April this year to increase transparency and government-revenue under the GST regime.

However, considering the companies issuing a large number of invoices directly to the customers and banks giving direct debit and credit facilities to the customers, the Government may exempt them from mandatory e-invoicing. Currently, consolidated invoices are allowed to banks & insurance companies.

According to experts, this decision of excluding the sectors which issue a pile of invoices directly to the customers or bear direct debit and credit facilities (like in banks), will be highly beneficial for these entities as otherwise, they will have to bear hefty compliance-related expenditure.

“These entities would have to undergo heavy compliance costs if the exemption was not allowed,” said Bipin Sapra, partner at EY.

From the coming month of April, companies generating aggregate revenue of INR 100 crore or above will have mandatorily issue e-invoices, as the government launches e-filing of invoices under the GST era, as a measure to barricade the tax evasion practices and bogus GST refund claims Know how to file GST refund claims manually by using GST refund form RFD-01A. We have explained step by step procedure in a brief manner.