GST Council In Its 24th Meeting Makes Implementation Of E-way Bills Mandatory From Feb 1, 2018

On December 16, the GST Council conducted its 24th meeting in an unscheduled manner through video conferencing.

The trigger for this emergency meeting was the fall in both the number of returns being filed as well as a massive INR 12,000 crores drop in revenue for the month of October. After the recent rate reductions, it is also expected that there could be a further revenue slippage of INR 20,000 crores.

The entire impact of this shortfall would be borne by the Centre as the states are protected through the compensation cess. It was also believed that the various relaxations given over the past few months to lessen the compliance burden, like summary returns (GSTR3B) and no invoice-matching (GSTR2), have encouraged some to avoid paying taxes and filing returns.

The Council had earlier in October 2017 deferred the implementation of the national e-Way Bill process till April 1, 2018 due to a lack of IT preparation and the compliance burden it would entail, and planned to introduce it in a staggered manner from January 1, 2018 and make it fully applicable from April 1.