India: e-invoicing

The Indian GST Council approved the standard of e-invoice in a meeting held on 20 September 2019.

On 13 December 2019, the government issued Notification No 68/2019 CT to 72/2019 CT, laying down legal road map for e-invoicing.

E-invoicing has become available voluntarily from January 2020, via their Invoice Registration Portal.

E-invoicing will become mandatory from April 2020 for B2B transactions.

Applicability of e-invoicing provisions from 1 April 2020

Supply(ies) to Registered persons (B2B supplies):

• A registered person whose aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds INR 100 Crs, will be required to prepare an ‘e-invoice’ in terms of Rule 48 (4) of CGST Rules, 2017 where Form GST INV- 01 containing various particulars is required to be uploaded on specified GST portal to generate IRN (Invoice Reference Number);
• A list of 10 websites is notified as Common Goods and Services Tax Electronic Portal for the generation of the IRN;
• Invoices not issued as above shall be treated as invalid under GST

Supply(ies) to Unregistered persons (B2C supplies):

• Further, an invoice issued to an unregistered person i.e. B2C by a registered person whose aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds INR 500 Crs, is required to contain a QR Code;
• Where such registered person is paid via the application of a Dynamic QR Code made available to the recipient through a digital display, such invoice containing cross reference of the payment via the Dynamic QR code shall be deemed to meet the criteria

Some of the benefits of the new e-invoicing system include: 

• The Invoice Reference Number (IRN) will be unique to each document,
• It can be expected that there will be a reduction in input credit verification issues – the same data will be reported to the tax department and in the buyers purchase register,
• It is also expected there will be a reduction of tax evasion by having a complete trail of B2B
  invoices and will reduce fake invoices.