GST officers have been armed with real-time data of commercial vehicle movement on highways with the integration of the e-way bill (EWB) system with FasTag and RFID.
Why such a move?
- The integration of e-way bill, RFID, and FASTag will enable tax officers to undertake live vigilance in respect of EWB compliances by businesses and will help curb tax evasion.
- It will aid in preventing revenue leakage by real-time identification of cases of recycling and/or non-generation of EWBs.
What are E-way bills (EWB)?
- Under the GST regime, transporters should carry the eWay Bill when moving goods from one place to another when certain conditions are satisfied.
- EWBs are mandatory for inter-state transportation of goods valued over Rs 50,000 from April 2018, with the exemption to precious items such as gold
- In this system, businesses and transporters have to produce before a GST inspector the e-way bill, if asked.
- On average, 25 lakh goods vehicle movements from more than 800 tolls are reported on a daily basis to the e-way bill system.
Benefits of the move
- Tax officers can now access reports on vehicles that have passed the selected tolls without EWBs in the past few minutes.
- Also, vehicles carrying critical commodities specific to the state and having passed the selected toll can be viewed.
- Any suspicious vehicles and vehicles of EWBs generated by suspicious taxpayer GSTINs, that have passed the selected toll on a near real-time basis, can also be viewed in this report.
- The officers can use these reports while conducting vigilance and make the vigilance activity more effective.
- Also, the officers of the audit and enforcement wing can use these reports to identify fraudulent transactions like bill trading, recycling of EWBs.
