The e-way bill will by June become a regular occurrence for most movements of goods within India. Unlike a GST compliant invoice which must be issued when there is a supply; an e-way bill is released before the movement of the products. When that is considered the number of e-way bills is significant, and the threshold for issuance is a value higher than 50,000 and a movement greater than 10 km.
Initially on 1 April 2018, the e-way bill was only to be issued for inter-state movement and intra-state movement in Karnataka but by 1 June 2018 it will be for all movements inter-state and intra-state except for five locations: Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep. By the 20th of April, a total of 12 states will require the e-way bill to be implemented for intra-state trade.
Every movement of goods will now have an e-way bill attached to it and so if you have avoided looking for it because your volume of inter-state movements was low; that would likely be an ending. The e-way bill will expand and continue to be a vital part of the business requirements in India.
When its time to make a sale, you must consider the following parameters for compliance:
Is it a taxable event?
Tax Rate?
CGST, SGST, IGST?
Do I need an invoice or a bill of supply?
Do I need an e-way bill?
While many of the requirements for the e-way bill are aligned to invoices – you can sometimes need an e-way bill where there is no requirement of tax invoice.
For example, the movement of goods between two warehouses requires an e-way bill within the same state, but it is not a taxable event. Therefore, you have to generate e-way bill but need not create a tax invoice.
Even though you don’t have to calculate the tax, you still have to report all of the pertinent details for the movement such as the description, HSN, quantity, and transporter. The question you have to ask yourself is, do you have a template which you can refill for this or can you use something better? Are there ways you can directly upload the information into the GSTN and create all of the necessary technical documents without having to visit a portal and try to key in data. Is there something which answers the questions about what are valid responses and which has validations? Finally – is there something which can tell you which states will start requiring e-way bill for intra-state without you having to think about it.
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