INSPECTION OF GOODS IN MOVEMENT UNDER GST LAW (PART 2)

[Dr. Sanjiv Agarwal]

This part of the Article deals with documents in relation to goods in movement and detention under the GST law.

Prescribed documents

The documents required to be carried by the person in-charge of conveyance (bus, truck, lorry, any other transport vehicle etc.) shall be e-way bills as prescribed under rule 138 of the GST Rules, 2017. Those would include the details of vehicle, supplier, origin of goods, destination, recipient, value etc.

The registered person (supplier) or any person who is handing over or originating the delivery of goods to conveyance will generate the prescribed documents (E-way bill) on the common portal and handover to the person in-charge of the conveyance. It can also be generated by conveyance owner or recipient of goods.

Upon generation of the e-way bill on the common portal, a unique E-way Bill Number (EBN) shall be made available to the supplier, the recipient and the transporter on the common portal.

The monetary limit shall be per consignment and not per conveyance. If a truck is carrying several consignments and the value of an individual consignment is less than INR 50,000 but the combined value of different consignments in the truck is more than INR 50,000, no document (E-way bill) as prescribed in this section needs to be carried by the person in-charge of the truck. However, if a transport vehicle is carrying six consignments and out of these two are of a value of more than INR 50,000, the e-way bill will be generated by these two consignors and handed over to the person in-charge of the vehicle.

Moving goods worth more than INR 50,000 under GST will require prior online registration of the consignment and securing an ‘e-waybill’ that tax officials can inspect any time during transit to check tax evasion.

Rule 138 requires registered entities to furnish information to the GST Network (GSTN) website, relating to goods worth more than INR 50,000 they intend to move within a State or outside.

Validation of documents

In terms of section 68(2) of CGST Act, 2017, documents required to be carried for movement of goods shall be validated in prescribed manner, i.e., online on common portal of GSTN.

Vide Notification No. 4/2017-Central Tax dated 19.06.2017 w.e.f. 22.06.2017, Central Government has notified www.gst.gov.in as the Common Goods and Services Tax Electronic Portal for facilitating registration, payment of tax, furnishing of returns, computation and settlement of integrated tax and electronic way bill. “www.gst.gov.in” means the website managed by the Goods and Services Tax Network, a company incorporated under the provisions of section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.

Interception of conveyance

As per section 68(3) of the CGST Act, 2017, where any conveyance is intercepted by the proper officer at any place, he may require the person in charge of the said conveyance to produce the documents prescribed and devices for verification, and the said person shall be liable to produce the documents and devices and also allow inspection of goods.

Detention of conveyance

Section 71 of the CGST Act, 2017, provides for allowing for access to the business premises of a taxable person. While ‘business premises’ has not been defined in the GST law, the terms business [section 2(17)], place of business [section 2(85) and principal place of business [section 2(89)] have been defined in the CGST Act, 2017.

The term ‘access’ has not been defined in the GST law. However, ‘access’ does not mean inspection or search. ‘Access’ literally means approach or the means or power of approaching. According to section 2(1)(9) of Information Technology Act, 2000, ‘access’ with its grammatical variations and cognate expressions means gaining entry into, instructing or communicating with the logical, arithmetical, or memory function resources of a computer, computer system or computer network.

As per section 71 of the CGST Act, 2017 any proper officer duly authorized by the Joint Commissioner of GST is empowered to have access to any business premises. Such authorization shall be in writing and shall be restricted to business premises of the taxable person.

(To be continued…..)

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Discussions to this article

[Sadanand Bulbule]

Sir,

I congratulate you on your constant updates on crucial issues being faced by the tax complaints and to remove the needless troubles. Moving back to your articles on inspection of goods in transit and related issues, here is my personal opinion as under:

My understanding of Rule 138(3) of the GST Rules, 2017 is, it provides an " option" to generate E-way bill by the unregistered person causing the movement of consignment on his own risk and responsibility , particularly when the goods are delivered by the registered person on ex-show room basis. Of course such consignment would be covered by valid tax invoice issued by the registered person. It means there is freedom of choice to the unregistered person to generate or otherwise. Normally the agriculturists who buy the agro based equipment and allied machines for agricultural operations are unregistered persons. As such many Proper Officers are levying penalty under Section 129 for not carrying E-way bills despite convincing that they are real agriculturists and naturally unregistered persons, having taken the delivery of goods on ex-show room basis.

Bottom line.

Choice cannot be converted into compulsion.

Therefore, I seek your comments on this specific issue so that the innocent farmers are not troubled any more on this misplaced interpretation by the Proper Officers.