Author(s): Majid Alam

Abstract: The E-way bill, am accompaniment to the nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST), has total most as much media attention as the term input tax credit in the last few months. But after being rolled out on February 1, 2018 with much fanfare, the E-way bill has met with the same fate as some of return filings on the GST. It been deferred indefinitely after taxpayers complained of technical glitches that stymied all their attempts to generate it online. The e-way bill trials having begun ahead of a nationwide launch, companies are worried about their preparedness, supply disruptions and the ability of the goods and services tax network (GSTN) to bear the additional load. The e-way bill is a key element of GST but its implementation had been deferred to give companies time to get used to the indirect tax regime, which was put in place on July 1last year. The e-way bill, which will be required to transport any item worth more than Rs 50,000 within the country, is to be made mandatory from February 1, earlier than scheduled, as per a December 16 decision of the GST Council. It's proposed to be a permit of sorts in electronic format that will contain details of the goods being transported. The early adoption of the e-way bill follows a decline in GST revenue in the past few months amid fears of tax evasion. From a peak of over Rs 95,000 crore a month, GST revenue fell to about Rs 81,000 crore last month but that also follows a lowering of rates on about 200 items of daily use in November to lower retail prices. The e-way bill system was to have been started from April 1, 2018. GST is an Indirect Tax which has replaced many Indirect Taxes in India. The Goods and Service Tax Act was passed in the Parliament on 29th March 2017. The Act came into effect on 1st July 2017. In this article, we take a closer look at what is GST and the reason why it is making business and taxes simpler and easier. Goods and services are divided into five tax slabs for collection of tax - 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. Petroleum products and alcoholic drinks are taxed separately by the individual State Governments. India, being a fast developing nation, faces the problem of tax evasion in the significant areas of the economy. A new digital reform part of the Goods and Services Tax implementation in India, named as E-Way bill, has surely become a game-changer in this matter recently. If the states in India could implement it successfully, that would surely have a positive impact on the economic system as the concept of Goods and Service Tax and the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN) becomes more transparent and the new digitalization technique renders a number of benefits to the parties involved and protects the interest of the Government. This paper is a conceptual study on the E-Way bill system introduced in India and is done on the basis of secondary data collected from various websites. This study attempts to understand the very purpose behind such a digital movement and how this would transform the logistics industry of the country. The study also focuses on the importance of the system and its current state of operation. The study gives due importance to the analysis of e-way bill system with special reference to the case of Uttar Pradesh. The study found that the mechanism of E-Way bill is an excellent step taken by the Government of India to facilitate transportation of goods, both inter-state and intra-state, avoiding completely the scope for tax evasion. The e-way bill system, to a great extent, renders transparency in the transit of goods and changes the image of the country at large by transforming the methods of verifying and validating the authenticity of the transactions. It had proven that the corruption reduces as the human intervention is eliminated. If implemented properly, e-way bills would have the potential to re-structure the entire logistics industry and bring a revolution in the transportation of goods throughout the country.

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