Input Tax Credit is the lifeline of GST Revenue generation as well as ensures the smooth business functioning of private business firms and taxpayers. In order to ensure that the input tax credit does not get stuck taxpayers can now check if and when potential suppliers have filed their Goods and Service tax returns. This will help taxpayers ensure safety by choosing the right vendors for their transactions.
The feature was effective from February this year. It allows taxpayers to view tax history of the vendor and confirm their tax liabilities by entering the GST Identification Number or the GSTIN of the vendor. The same was confirmed by GST Network Chief Executive Officer Prakash Kumar. By entering the GSTIN, taxpayers can view the history of last 10 returns filed by the vendor. The status includes fields like the type of date of filing, return filed, the status of returns filed or not and tax period.
Prakash Kumar, CEO, GSTN said, “This was a demand from the industry (to develop such a platform). They wanted to be assured that their ITC (input tax credit) will come, so show us the status whether the return has been filed or not.” The E-way bill after the failed first attempt was relaunched on April 1st. The electronic invoice system is meant to bring the earlier irregulated interstate movement of Goods under the GST ambit. The Government has pegged high hopes on revenue generation by using this method of curbing evasion. It is mandatory to generate e-way bills for movement of goods worth over Rs 50,000 between states.
Stable E-Way Bill Portal
Unlike last time, the portal for generating e-way bills for inter-state movement of goods is apt enough to handle high volumes of requests for bill generation. On April 4, about 8.66 lakh—the highest number of such invoices were generated on the portal. The maximum number of e-way bills generated within an hour is around 92,000.
The GST Council is contemplating on the introduction of e-way bills for intra-state movement of goods in a phase-out procedure. This would prevent GST Network from crumbling under an excessive load applied all at once. However, Mr Prakash Kumar added that the final decision would depend on the insights obtained from the current trend of invoices being generated. There is no data to guess the possible number of intra-state e waybills.
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Mr Prakash Kumar further added that the e-way bill portal will allow taxpayers to automatically update their GST return with their supplies for which e-way bill has to be generated. Taxpayers who refrain from automatically updating their GSTR-1 return will have their invoices matched by GSTN.
As per some whispers doing the rounds, GSTN will be powered by a central database that would store details of taxes paid by taxpayers. Automatic alerts would be sent to taxpayers if details in returns filed don’t match the data in e-way bills, above a certain threshold.
