Starting May 1, 2023, businesses with an annual turnover of Rs 100 crore or more must comply with a new GST rule that mandates the uploading of electronic invoices on the Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) within seven days of their issue. This replaces the current system where businesses upload invoices on the IRP on the day they are issued, regardless of their actual issue date. The GST Network (GSTN) has advised taxpayers that the government will impose a time limit for reporting old invoices on the e-invoice IRP portals. This restriction will only apply to invoices and not debit/credit notes.
To comply with the new requirements, affected companies must upload invoices promptly. Failure to do so will disqualify them from availing of Input Tax Credit (ITC). For instance, an invoice dated April 1, 2023, must be reported by April 8, 2023, as the system will not allow reporting after the 7-day window.
Currently, businesses with a turnover of ₹10 crore and above must generate electronic invoices for B2B transactions. The threshold for generating B2B e-invoices was lowered to ₹20 crore from April 1, 2022, and further reduced to ₹10 crore as of October 1, 2022. Tax officers detected GST evasion worth over ₹1.01 lakh crore in the just-concluded fiscal year, and the government is utilizing data analytics and human intelligence to identify fraud while taking steps to increase compliance. The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) recovered ₹21,000 crore during the same period. In 2022-23, the DGGI officers detected evasion amounting to ₹1,01,300 crore, with a recovery of ₹21,000 crore made.
