As many as 3.5 lakh GST payers may see their e-way bill facility get blocked from today. GST Network, the entity that provides the IT backbone for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), has activated the blocking-unblocking facility for the e-way bill generation from today. The government, in order to increase compliance under GST and minimise tax frauds, has come up with a new rule to block the facility to generate e-way bill for taxpayers who have not filed their GSTR-3B returns for two consecutive months.

Once blocked, the e-way bill generation for such GSTINs will not be done either as supplier, recipient or even as a transporter on the e-way bill portal. E-way bill is an electronic document required to be carried for transportation of goods.

The move is one of an array of steps that the government has taken to check GST evasion and frauds. The decision to block the e-way bill for non-compliance of filing of GSTR-3B was notified by the GST council a few months ago. Thereafter, taxpayers generating e-way bill on e-way bill portal were shown the message that facility will be withdrawn if two consecutive GSTR-3B are not filed.

However, the blocking of the e-way facility is temporary and the taxpayer can easily unblock it and get back to the business.

According to GSTN data, 20.75 lakh GSTINs have not filed September and October GSTR-3B, thus their facility to generate e-way bill is required to be blocked. Out of these 20.75 lakh GSTINs, 3.47 lakh GSTINs (16.7 per cent) had transactions in e-way bill system for September and October 2019. Thus, these 3.47 lakh GSTINs will get impacted immediately since the blocking feature started on December 2, 2019 in the e-way bill system.

In another move to curb tax evasion and increase compliance, the tax department now cancels registration of taxpayers who have not filed GSTR-3B return for three consecutive months.

In a recent conference, Anand Kumar Tiwari, Additional Commissioner, Department of Trade & Taxes, Delhi government, informed that the department had to cancel the Delhi registration of a major airline because it failed to file returns for three consecutive months.

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