Companies with over Rs 5 crore annual turnover will soon have to generate GST e-invoices for B2B transactions: Official

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GST-registered businesses with annual turnover of more than Rs 5 crore will soon have to generate electronic invoices for B2B transactions, a top official said on Thursday.

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) Chairman Vivek Johri said the GST Council, comprising finance ministers of the Centre and states, had decided to implement it in a phased manner and with e-invoices being generated, for every B2B (Business-to-Business) transaction, invoice matching by tax authorities would not be required under Goods and Services Tax (GST).

"We started with a very high threshold and soon we are going to have all taxpayers with an annual turnover of more than Rs 5 crore having to generate e-invoices for their B2B part of business. With the launch of e-invoice, we don't need invoice matching," Johri said at a event organised by industry body PHDCCI here. Currently, businesses with turnover of over Rs 20 crore will have to generate e-invoices for B2B transactions.

"E-invoicing is revolution and there is no other country that has adopted this. The phasing has been very gradual. We didn't want to burden the taxpayer community with e-invoices... we (Council) knew it cannot be done in one stroke, we started in a phased manner and gradually brought it down," Johri said.

Under GST, e-invoicing for B2B transactions was made mandatory for companies with turnover of over Rs 500 crore from October 1, 2020, which was then extended to those with turnover of over Rs 100 crore from January 1, 2021.

From April 1 last year, companies with turnover over Rs 50 crore were generating B2B e-invoices, and the threshold was brought down to Rs 20 crore from April 1, 2022. Johri also said that in the future, GST system would be developed in such a way that there would be complete auto-population of tax return forms.

"Not too far out in future... I can assure you we may have a system where we can give you all returns auto-populated, you just have to look at them and click the button and say yes it's right and your return filing is over," he added.