GST officers will shortly be issued with real-time data on vehicles travelling without e-way

The Indian government is developing a system that will eventually offer real-time reports to GST officers for vehicles that are travelling without e-way bills, allowing them to detect jammed trucks at toll plazas and monitor GST evasion. Tax officials will also receive analysis reports on detecting e-way bills EWB with no movement of goods, that will aid officers in detecting instances of circular dealing. It will also include details on the recycling of e-way bills for commodities that are vulnerable to tax evasion in order to assist officers in detecting tax dodgers. From April 2018, e-way bills are mandated for inter-state transportation of goods worth more than Rs 50,000 under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. Gold, on the other hand, is prohibited.

Businesses and transporters must submit the e-way bill to a GST regulator if requested under the electronic way (e-way) bill system or EWB. The government is currently developing a 'Real-time and Analysis Reports on RFID' for GST officers to assist them in identifying defaulters who are mistreating the e-way bill system. The government stated in a report titled 'E-way Bill - A Journey of Three Years' that 180 crore e-way bills have been issued in three years, until March 2021. Just 7 crore of these bills were inspected by tax officers. 61.68 crore e-way bills were generated in the 2020-21 fiscal year, which ended in March 2021, of which 2.27 crore were selected for authentication. In the 2019-20 fiscal year, which ended in March 2020, 62.88 crore e-way bills were generated, 3.01 crore of which were selected for inspection by tax officers. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka are the top five states in terms of the number of e-way bill generated for inter-state movement of goods.

Textiles, electrical machinery, machinery and mechanical instruments, iron and steel, and automobiles are the top five sectors with the highest e-way bills generated in the last three years. The government has incorporated RFID/FasTag with the e-way bill system as of January 1, 2021, and a carrier is mandated to have an RFID tag in his vehicle, with specifics of the e-way bill generated for goods being transported by the vehicle being uploaded into the Radio-frequency identification (RFID). The specifics uploaded into the device are submitted to the government portal as the vehicle passes the RFID Tag reader on the highway. Revenue officials then use the details to verify the supplies made by a GST-registered citizen. To strengthen tax enforcement, the government has begun preventing the generation of EWB Bill if a GST registered taxpayer has not submitted a GSTR-3B return for two months in a row. In addition, the government has made it illegal to generate multiple EWBs on a single invoice.

If an EWB is generated once with an invoice number or document number, no one else can generate another EWB with the same invoice number. Furthermore, the e-way bills system now allows calculating distance based on PIN codes. Based on PIN codes, the system can automatically determine the distance between the origin and destination. In the potential, the government will have a real-time report on vehicle activity for a specified e-way bill, which will aid officers in identifying the vehicle's travel activity. In the potential, the government will have a real-time report on vehicle activity for a specified e-way bill, which will aid officers in identifying the vehicle's track of movement. Officers will then have access to a real-time report on vehicles driving without e-Way bills for a specific toll plaza, allowing them to track only those vehicles that do not have e-Way bills. Additionally, analysis reports on detecting EWB with no flow of goods will be provided to aid officers in finding instances of bill and circular trading. Reports on the recycling of EWB for tax evasion-prone goods would aid in the identification of non-filers of tax.

Rajat Mohan, a senior partner at AMRG & Associates, stated, "With enhancements in GSTN & NIC systems, the efficacy of point-to-point tracking is getting water-tight. At this pace, taxpayers will soon witness real-time monitoring of goods. Transportation sector may have real-time tracking technologies in place in the next 3- 5 years, whereby tax leakage will practically become impossible."