Kumari Palany & Co

e-invoice GST bills from January 2020

Posted on: 19/Sep/2019 1:52:08 PM
The officials for the GST bill processing have informed that all invoices of sales and purchase will be replaced via the government prescribed e-invoice pan-India from January 2020.

Prior to this, during their meeting on 20th September, the goods and services tax (GST) council will deliberate on new format and system for issuing of e-invoice.

It may be noted that the Union government has already announced the proposal of an e-invoice system to replace all sales and purchase invoices from January 2020.

In the next GST council meeting, which is scheduled on September 20, the government is going to unveil the new prescribed format and the system through which an e-invoice can be generated. Subsequently, this move will be up for council’s approval.

The e-invoice generation process

There will be a standard template of GST invoice and a unique invoice number which will be generated through a system created by the GST Network. This unique invoice reference number (IRN) or the unique invoice number will be based on the computation of a firm`s GSTIN, which is its GST registration number.

Further, the government-nominated registrars will issue the e-invoice on request of a taxpayer that is a seller or a buyer. Invoice requests can be sent by a taxpayer through the web, API, SMS, mobile app or an offline tool to the registrar to ensure wide coverage even in the remote areas.

Subsequently, this will be digitally signed by the registrar and it will also have a QR code.

In this juncture, it may be recalled that there was an earlier report that the government`s intention to incentivize digital payments made via QR codes. The government wants a mandatory QR code, which will be printed by the GST registrar and a print can be taken out by the taxpayer to be sent as an invoice number.