E-way bills will help the central and state tax
authorities to track interstate and intrastate movements
of goods that are part of consignments.
The government is likely to give e-commerce players
relaxation if orders are small. However, it is not clear
if separate e-way bills for multiple orders are required
if the same vehicle carries the consignments.
“E-commerce players will be given partial relaxation.
They send small packets in one go. This would require
them to generate many e-way bills, which is not
feasible,” the official said.
In the case of small orders, at least the e-commerce
players would not require an e-way bill, he said.
“However, an e-way bill may be needed for bigger orders,
such as the one for iPhones,” he added.
Besides, the Council may offer exemption from the e-way
bill to exports from an inland container depot (ICD) to
a port.
“Imports were free from the e-way bill but exports were
not.
Exempting exports will reduce the load on the system.
Movements of goods from the ICD to the port may be
exempt,” said another official.
Companies are in a fix as to how the e-way bill will
apply if goods are returned. “If I send consignments to
a customer who does not accept them, who will issue the
e-way bill in the case of the goods returned,” asked a
senior executive of a company.
The validity of an e-way bill is 24 hours for 100 km.
However, the government may also extend the e-way bill
if a truck is held up at a warehouse for more than 24
hours. “It may be treated as an extraordinary situation
if a truck needs to be stopped for one-two days at the
warehouse. That period could be excluded from validity,”
the official quoted above added.
M S Mani, partner, Deloitte, said: “Since the e-way bill
is being introduced as an anti-evasion mechanism, B2C
(business-to-consumer) transactions that are not
susceptible to evasion, such as e-commerce deliveries,
and B2B (business-to-business) movements that are well
tracked, such as those in special economic zones or
ICDs, could have some relaxation.
”However, Pratik Jain, partner, PwC India, pointed out
that selective exemption should be avoided.
“Typically a transporter may carry different types of
goods and if an e-way bill is not needed for one of such
commodities, things may turn complicated. The focus
should be on setting up a mechanism to deal with
administrative issues as well as transactions such as
free-of-cost supplies, sales returns/rejections, and so
on,” Jain said.
He said increasing the worth of consignments from Rs
50,000 to Rs 100,000 should be considered.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is developing the
e-way bill system, while the other information
technology matters related to the GST are being managed
by the GST Network (GSTN), a private body. The NIC has
got an advance of Rs 400 million for this.
Industry has asked the government to keep e-way bill
only for sensitive commodities, which was the case in a
few states in the pre-GST regime.
A group of ministers on fixing issues relating to the
GST portal, headed by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil
Modi, on Saturday recommended rolling out the e-way
bill.
The GST collection slowdown had prompted the GST Council
to advance the roll-out of the bill on interstate
movement of goods on February 1 and for intrastate
carriage on June 1. However, it had to be deferred on
the first day of the roll-out because the portal
crashed.
Source::: Business Standard,
dated 26/02/2018.