From December, firms with sales below Rs5 crore—defined as micro firms—will not be able to generate the electronic permit (e-way bill) for goods transportation if they have defaulted on filing return forms for two consecutive tax periods
Micro-enterprises will soon begin to feel the heat of the government’s tax enforcement drive, with key compliance measures now covering larger businesses becoming applicable to them over the next few months.
From December, firms with sales below ₹5 crore—defined as micro firms—will not be able to generate an electronic permit (e-way bill) for goods transportation if they have defaulted on filing return forms for two consecutive tax periods.
The National Informatics Centre, which runs the portal for generating e-way bills, said it will activate this feature for all firms from 1 December irrespective of their turnover. From 15 October, this compliance rule has been applicable for bigger businesses.
The government had so far limited compliance enforcement measures to larger firms, but the e-way bill restriction shows that after about three and a half years of rolling out the Goods and Service Tax (GST), it is going for a full-fledged enforcement drive. Small businesses, a politically significant segment of the economy, have so far enjoyed considerable compliance relaxations in the GST transition period, but the revenue loss during covid has forced authorities to extend the compliance drive to cover them as well.
Source: livemint
