Businesses with turnover of ₹100 crore and above will be required to upload their e-invoices to IRP within 7 days of issuing such invoice from May 1, GST Network said.
Currently, companies upload these invoices to the Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) on the current date, regardless of when these invoices were issued.
In a notice to taxpayers, GST Network (GSTN) said the government has decided to impose a time limit for reporting old invoices on e-invoicing IRP portals for taxpayers whose total annual turnover is greater than or equal to at ₹100 crore.
“To ensure timely compliance, taxpayers in this category will not be permitted to report invoices that are older than 7 days from the reporting date,” GSTN said.
In order to allow sufficient time for taxpayers to comply with this requirement, this new format would be implemented from May 1, 2023.
This restriction will apply to the invoice and there will be no time restriction for reporting debit/credit notes, he added.
Giving an example, the GSTN said that 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 prevent the user from reporting the invoice after the 7 day window.
Therefore, it is essential that taxpayers ensure that they report the invoice within the 7-day period provided by the new deadline, the GSTN said.
In accordance with the GST Act, businesses are not eligible for Input Tax Credit (ITC) if invoices are not uploaded to the IRP.
Rajat Mohan, senior partner at AMRG & Associates, said this technological change would stop the backdating of e-invoices by large companies.
“After successfully implementing this for large taxpayers, the government should roll out these changes for all taxpayers in a phased manner,” Mohan added.
Currently, businesses with turnover of ₹10 crore and above are required to generate an e-invoice for all B2B transactions.
Under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Act, electronic invoicing for business-to-business (B2B) transactions has been made mandatory for businesses with turnover above ₹500 crore from October 1 2020, which was later extended to those with a turnover of more than ₹100 crore from 1 January 2021.
From April 1, 2021, companies with turnover above ₹50 crore generated B2B e-invoices, and the threshold was lowered to ₹20 crore from April 1, 2022. From October 1, 2022 , the threshold was further lowered to ₹10 crore.
EY tax partner Saurabh Agarwal said putting in place time limits for reporting invoices on the IRP would help administer compliances and be another big step towards digitalization.
“It can also help to increase the collection of GST once said turnover limit of ₹100 crore is significantly reduced or made mandatory for all assessments needed to generate IRN (Registration Number invoice),” Agarwal said.
