Govt imposes time limit for reporting certain e-invoices

New Delhi: Businesses with turnover of Rs 100 crore and above will have to upload their electronic invoices on IRP within 7 days of the issue of such invoice with effect from May 1, GST Network has said.

Currently, businesses upload such invoices on Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) on the current date, irrespective of the date of issue of such invoice. In an advisory to taxpayers, GST Network (GSTN) said the government has decided to impose a time limit on reporting old invoices on the e-invoice IRP portals for taxpayers with aggregate annual turnover greater than or equal to Rs 100 crore.

"To ensure timely compliance, taxpayers in this category will not be allowed to report invoices older than 7 days on the date of reporting," GSTN said. In order to provide sufficient time for taxpayers to comply with this requirement, this new format would be implemented from May 1, 2023. This restriction will apply to invoice, and there will be no time restriction on reporting debit/credit notes, it added.

Giving example, the GSTN said if an invoice has a date of April 1, 2023, it cannot be reported after April 8, 2023. The validation system built into the invoice registration portal will disallow the user from reporting the invoice after the 7-day window. Hence, it is essential for taxpayers to ensure that they report the invoice within the 7-day window provided by the new time limit, the GSTN said. As per GST law, businesses cannot avail input tax credit (ITC) if invoices are not uploaded on the IRP. AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said this technological change would arrest backdating of e-invoices by large companies.

"After successfully implementing this for large taxpayers, government is expected to roll out these changes for all taxpayers in a phased manner," Mohan added. Currently, businesses with turnover of Rs 10 crore and above are required to generate electronic invoice for all B2B transactions.

Under Goods and Services Tax (GST) law, e-invoicing for business-to-business (B2B) transactions was made mandatory for companies with turnover of over Rs 500 crore from October 1, 2020, which was then extended to those with turnover of over Rs 100 crore effective January 1, 2021. From April 1, 2021, companies with turnover of over Rs 50 crore were generating B2B e-invoices, and the threshold was brought down to Rs 20 crore beginning April 1, 2022.