E-way Bill : Important Topics for UPSC Exams

The E-way bill, or the electronic way bill, is a document to be generated online under the GST system, when goods of the value of more than ₹50,000 are shipped inter-State or intra-State. The E-way bill must be raised before the goods are shipped and should include details of the goods, their consignor, recipient and transporter. According to the McKinsey report speed- breakers cost Indian Economy an extra $45 Billion or 4.3% of the GDP every year so the GST e-way Bill is expected to trim the logistic cost by 20%.

How to generate e-way Bill?

e-way portal provides the seamless gateway to generate the e-way Bill via two methods web and SMS.

How to verify an e-way Bill?

A consignment can be intercepted at any point for the verification of its E-way bill, for all inter-State and intra-State movement of goods.
If a consignment is found without an E-way bill, a penalty of ₹10,000 or tax sought to be evaded, whichever is greater, can be levied.

What is the advantage of an e-way Bill?

E-way bill is supposed to make the transportation smooth by eliminating the time spent on inter-state check points, since the time spent by truck on inter-state checkpoints is around 20% of its total journey time which is huge.
E-way bill helps in reducing Tax-Evasion since every e-way bill generated by the sender or buyer of goods is to be automatically updated in the outward sales return (GSTR) of the supplier, leaving little scope for tax evasions on shipments.
In previous tax regime, tax official had to manually cross-check the way bill against the tax-returns filed to verify whether the tax has been paid or not but with e-way bill the process becomes automatic.
Single electronic way bill for movement of goods across the country will save lot of paperwork.
The LPI (Logistics Performance Index) Survey by World Bank in 2014 put logistics costs at 14 per cent of the total value of goods in India, while it is only 6-8 per cent in other major countries. Thus, e-way bill will help to reduce the logistic cost and it will help in increasing ease of doing business in India.
It may increase the govt revenues by 20%.

Limitation and challenges in the implementation of the e-way Bill

The original rollout plan for February 1, 2018 had to be aborted as the IT system couldn’t handle the lakhs of e-way bills being generated by consignors and transporters.
The e-way Bill has been proposed to be launched in the phased manner in the states from April 1 2018, onwards due to technical limitations.