Now, businesses supplying goods worth more than Rs 50,000 will have option to include details of e-way bills generated while filing the final monthly sales return under GSTR-1, a move aimed at curbing tax evasion by reporting different sets of supplies data.

Matching of invoices of e-way bills with the sales shown in GSTR-1 will help taxmen in assessing whether the supplies have been accurately shown in sales return and GST paid on the same, tax experts said.

“To avoid double data entry, GSTN has provided a facility to taxpayers, where month's e-way bill data is shown in format, which is required by a taxpayer to fill up the Form GSTR-1. The taxpayer can import data in his GSTR-1 form or import the same and use it with GSTR-1 offline tool to create his GSTR-1 Return Form,” GST Network said.

Touted as an anti-evasion measure, e-way bill system was rolled out on April 1, 2018, for moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another. The same for intra or within the state movement was rolled out in a phased manner from April 15, 2018.

Following this, it has come to investigative officers' notice that some transporters are doing multiple trips by generating only a single e-way bill or not reflecting e-way bill invoices while filing GSTR-1. It has also come to the notice that certain e-way bill is not being generated even as supplies are being made.

While generating e-way bill, details of supplier, receiver and other invoice details like number, date, goods, quantity, HSN code etc are provided by the taxpayer on e-way Bill Portal. This data is now transferred to GST portal, GSTN, which has developed the technology backbone for Goods and Services Tax (GST), said.

“With this facility, taxpayer will not be required to enter data in his Form GSTR-1 for all invoices for which he has generated e-way bill. This will avoid double data entry by taxpayers. This facility will help taxpayer to fill up their Form GSTR-1 in less time.