This blog was last updated on October 28, 2020
Even though India’s continuous transaction controls (CTC) reform went live less than a month ago, the surrounding legal and technical framework for the e-invoicing platform still has many moving pieces. However, little by little, these puzzle pieces have started to come together.
Earlier this year, the Indian authorities announced their intention to facilitate the e-invoicing platform as the core data collection source for fiscally relevant information. As part of this plan, the back-end connectivity between the e-invoicing system with the GSTN and e-waybill platforms was enabled. Recently, more steps have been taken to enhance the abilities of the e-invoicing platform.
In his announcement earlier this October, the Secretary of Finance stated that the e-invoicing system will soon replace India’s e-waybill system. Since then, new technical capabilities related to the e-waybill have been added to the e-invoicing platform. A new API to receive e-waybill details for a given IRN has been made available on the sandbox page. It’s also expected that taxpayers currently in scope of the e-invoicing mandate will be blocked from using the e-waybill portal to generate e-waybills. Those taxpayers will then need to use the e-invoicing platform to produce their e-waybills.
Even though the complete transition from the e-waybill platform to the e-invoicing platform will take some time, India’s officials are working hard to make this transition as smooth and as quick as possible. Keeping this agenda in mind, taxpayers need to start making the necessary preparations at their end to be able to start using the e-invoicing platform to generate future e-waybills.
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