A Gist to Generate E Way Bill and their Advantages

E way bill is a document required to be carried by a person in charge of the conveyance carrying any consignment of goods of value exceeding fifty thousand rupees mandated by the government in terms of section 68 of the GST Act read with rule 138 of the rules framed there under.

Generate e way bill:

Eway bill is generated from the NIC portal by the registered persons or transporters who cause movement of goods/consignment before the commencement of such movement. One must remember that even if you have registered in NIC portal, you need to register again on the e way bill portal.

Consolidated e way bill:

It is a document comprising of multiple e-way bills for multiple consignments being carried in one transport vehicle. The transporter, carrying multiple consignments of various consignors and consignees in one vehicle can generate e way bill and carry a consolidated one instead of carrying multiple e-way bills for those consignments. As per the decision of GST Council, to generate e-way bill for all inter-state movement has been rolled out from April 1, 2018. E-way Bill system for all inter-state movement of goods in the state of Karnataka is also operational from the said date.

For all intra-state movement of goods in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh is slated for April 15. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has laid out a detailed procedure w.r.t time bound uploading of reports/ forms by revenue authorities, time bound closure of cases where goods have been detained, instructions to release goods where there are no prima-facie irregularities. This would “ensure uniformity” in the procedure of interception or conveyance for inspection of goods, detention, seizure, and release and confiscation of such goods and conveyances.

From April 15, 2018 midnight till 5 pm i.e., on Sunday, about 0.24 million e way bills for both interstate and intra-state was generated on the portal. There was not much increase in generation of e way bills on Sunday on account of intra-state roll-out. The one reason for not much increase in the number to generate e way bill could be because Gujarat has mandated e way bills for intra-state movement for only 19 items. These items include edible oil, oil cakes, ceramic tiles, iron and steel, processed tobacco, gutkha, cigarette, cement, timber products, tea, marble and granite.

General benefits

By enrolling on e-way bills portal include the traders not visiting the tax offices anymore, average waiting time at check-post reduces drastically, scope of corruption will be eradicated, self-policies by traders, environment friendly- nearly 50 tons of paper is being saved per day, an accurate database created which will be much helpful for tax analysis, officials saved of monotonous work could concentrate on analytical work, revenue growth will be more and there would be complete transparency in transactions.