GST - DOCUMENTATION FOR MOVEMENT OF GOODS

Prescribed documents

The documents required to be carried by the person in-charge of conveyance (bus, truck, lorry, any other transport vehicle etc.) shall be e-way bills as prescribed under rule 138 of the GST Rules, 2017. Those would include the details of vehicle, supplier, origin of goods, destination, recipient, value etc.

The registered person (supplier) or any person who is handing over or originating the delivery of goods to conveyance will generate the prescribed documents (E-way bill) on the common portal and handover to the person in-charge of the conveyance. It can also be generated by conveyance owner or recipient of goods.

Upon generation of the e-way bill on the common portal, a unique E-way Bill Number(EBN) shall be made available to the supplier, the recipient and the transporter on the common portal.

The monetary limit shall be per consignment and not per conveyance. If a truck is carrying several consignments and the value of an individual consignment is less than INR 50,000 but the combined value of different consignments in the truck is more than INR 50,000, no document (E-way bill) as prescribed in this section needs to be carried by the person in-charge of the truck. However, if a transport vehicle is carrying six consignments and out of these two are of a value of more than INR 50,000, the e-way bill will be generated by these two consignors and handed over to the person in-charge of the vehicle.

Moving goods worth more than INR 50,000 under GST will require prior online registration of the consignment and securing an 'e-waybill' that tax officials can inspect any time during transit to check tax evasion.

Rule 138 requires registered entities to furnish information to the GST Network (GSTN) website, relating to goods worth more than INR 50,000 they intend to move within a State or outside.

Validation of documents

In terms of section 68(2) of CGST Act, 2017, documents required to be carried for movement of goods shall be validated in prescribed manner, i.e., online on common portal of GSTN.

Vide Notification No. 4/2017-Central Tax dated 19.06.2017 w.e.f. 22.06.2017,Central Government has notified www.gst.gov.in as the Common Goods and Services Tax Electronic Portal for facilitating registration, payment of tax, furnishing of returns, computation and settlement of integrated tax and electronic way bill. "www.gst.gov.in" means the website managed by the Goods and Services Tax Network, a company incorporated under the provisions of section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.

Interception of conveyance

As per section 68(3) of the CGST Act, 2017, where any conveyance is intercepted by the proper officer at any place, he may require the person in charge of the said conveyance to produce the documents prescribed and devices for verification, and the said person shall be liable to produce the documents and devices and also allow inspection of goods.

Verification by Officials

The tax officials authorised for verification are required to record online a summary report of every inspection carried out by them within 24 hours of carrying out such inspections and the final report has to be uploaded within 3 days of inspections carried out by them.

The transport vehicle once verified in any state and verification has been done, no further physical verification of the conveyance will be carried out anywhere in the state unless there is a specific input available of evasion of tax.

The tax officials have the authority to intercept the conveyance carrying the goods to verify the E-way bill of the consignments. However the physical verification of the conveyance can be carried out only after seeking a specific approval from commissioner of any other officer authorised by him.

However, in case there are specific inputs of evasion of tax, physical verification of specific conveyance can also be carried out after obtaining approval from commissioner or any other officer empowered by him.

It may be noted that if a physical verification has been carried out by a proper officer at any place, and no discrepancies are found, the same vehicle cannot be subjected to another inspection, unless specific information of tax evasion is subsequently received. However, for imposing any penalty, a notice must be issued within seven days of detention or seizure and an order for levy of penalty shall be issued within seven days of the issuance of notice.

Minor mistakes to be ignored

CBIC has clarified vide Circular No. 64/38/2018-GST dated 14.09.2018 that confiscation should not be done where the document contains minor typographical mistakes which may be in the following form:

1. spelling mistakes in the name of the consignor or the consignee but the GSTIN, wherever applicable, is correct;
2. error in the pin-code but the address of the consignor and the consignee mentioned is correct, subject to the condition that the error in the PIN code should not have the effect of increasing the validity period of the E-way bill;
3. error in the address of the consignee to the extent that the locality and other details of the consignee are correct;
4. error in one or two digits of the document number mentioned in the E-way bill;
5. error in 4 or 6 digits level of HSN where the first 2 digits of HSN are correct and the rate of tax mentioned is correct; and
6. error in one or two digits/characters of the vehicle number.

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