A government official in India has said mandatory electronic invoicing of business-to-business (B2B) transactions, or any company with annual turnover above ₹20 crore, will bolster the country’s goods and services tax (GST) registrations.
As Indian media outlet Mint reported Sunday (Feb. 27), this would increase GST registrations by around 75%. The system will take effect on April 1 and will add 180,000 GST identification numbers (GSTINs), an increase to the 240,000 currently in existence.
The report notes that under the GST law, eInvoicing was first made mandatory for companies with a turnover of ₹500 crore or more as of October 2020. That was later extended to entities with a turnover of over ₹100 crore as of January 2021, and finally for those with more than ₹50 crore in April 2021.
The report notes that there were 53,523 companies under the registration in October 2020, and then 91,583 by January 2021 and 95,461 in April 2021.
A company can have numerous GSTINs if it runs a business in two or more states or Union territories, or if the registration process involves several business verticals, according to the report.
Another official, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said eInvoicing allows for real-time tracking of invoices and cuts down on the scope of fraud.
“Widening the scope to cover small and medium entities will not only help expand GST coverage, but plug the leakages. This will further bolster GST collections,” the first anonymous official said. “Currently, there are about 240,000 eligible GSTINs for over ₹50 crore annual revenue threshold.
“We hope to add at least 75-80% more by lowering the threshold to ₹20 crore in April. E-invoicing has helped improve compliance, which is visible in robust GST collections. It also helps prevents tax evasion.”
Tradeshift, a California company providing automated accounts payable (AP) and invoicing systems, has rolled out an expanded cross-border eInvoicing platform, which will let companies with a base in China to send and receive electronic purchase orders and invoices with trade partners.
See also: China’s First Cross-Border eInvoicing System Integrates Local Business Into Global Supply Chain
The new capability comes from the Tradeshift Pay program.
Before the platform expansion, Chinese businesses had to require global partners to operate a separate China-only system or primarily use paper invoicing.