Blockage of e-way bills to resume from Aug. 15

Taxpayers who have not filed GST returns for two months or quarters up to June 2021 will not be able to generate e-way bills from August 15.

As part of the efforts to push compliance of GST norms, the government has decided to resume the blocking of e-way bill generation facilities for nontaxpayers from August 15, GST Network has said.

It had earlier suspended the blocking of e-way bill generation for non-filers to provide relief during the pandemic.

Any taxpayer who has not filed two or more returns in GSTR-3B up to June 2021, or has not filed two or more statements in GST CMP-08 for the quarters up to April to June 2021, will not be able to generate e-way bills. Under the GST regime, eway bills have been made mandatory for inter-state transportation of goods valued over Rs 50,000 from April 2018. However, gold is exempted.

Meanwhile, GST authorities recovered Rs 1,920 crore from tax evaders in the first three months of the fiscal. They have detected tax evasion totaling Rs 7,421 crore in these months. In the previous fiscal, tax evasion of Rs 12,235 crore was recovered, though the government detected evasion of Rs 49,383 crore.

"Through the use of technology and various fraud check measures, the government has been able to detect several cases of fake ITC availments and misdeclarations etc. Accordingly, certain tough rules like suspension of registration, blocking of ITC etc. were also implemented in recent months to prevent GST evasion. It is good to see when the strict measures yield results as long as genuine tax payers are not put to inconvenience," said Abhishek Jain, tax partner, EY.