24th GST Council Meet is Over: E-Way Bill Compulsory from 1st February

The most powerful Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council today, through video conferencing decided to implement E-way bill from 1^st February 2017.

After the 23rd GST Council meeting held at Guwahati on November 10th, the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley confirmed the implemetaion of e-way bill from January onwards. He also clarified that the document will be made compulsory by April 1 next year.

This was after a decline in GST revenue collected by the Government in October which fell by Rs 12,000 in comparison to the preceding month. The Government earned Rs 83,346 crore from GST in October, the lowest since the GST rollout on July 1, whereas the tax collection figures for September were Rs 95,131 crore.

The 24th Meeting of the GST Council held today through video conference under the Chairmanship of the Union Minister Shri Arun Jaitley. It discussed about the implementation of e-way Bill system in the country. Till such time as the National e-way Bill is ready, the States were authorized to continue their own separate e-way Bill systems. However, it was represented by the trade and transporters that this is causing undue hardship in the Inter-State movement of goods and therefore, bringing in an early all India system of e-way Bill has become a necessity. The GST Council today reviewed the progress of readiness of hardware and software required for the introduction of nationwide e-way Bill System. After discussions with all the States, the following decisions were taken :-

2018. The nationwide e-way Bill system will be ready to be rolled out on a trial basis latest by 16th January, 2018. Trade and transporters can start using this system on a voluntary basis from 16th January, 2018.
2019. The Rules for implementation of nationwide e-way Bill system for Inter-State movement of goods on a compulsory basis will be notified with effect from 1st February, 2018. This will bring uniformity across the States for seamless inter-State movement of goods.

• While the System for both inter-State and intra-State e-way Bill generation will be ready by 16th January, 2018, the States may choose their own timings for implementation of e-way Bill for intra-State movement of goods on any date before 1st June, 2018. There are certain States which are already having system of e-way Bill for intra-State as well as inter-State movement and some of those States can be early adopters of national e-way Bill system for intra-State movement also. But in any case, the Uniform System of e-way Bill for inter-State as well as intra-State movement will be implemented across the country by 1st June, 2018.

Under the E-way Bill provisions, both the inter-State and intra-State movement of goods above Rs 50,000 is required to be pre-registered online. Earlier, when a few days were left for the GST rollout, the Central Government had decided to postpone the implementation of the provision since it was not sure about the technological backbone.