The Finance Ministry is likely to propose a turnover threshold of ₹50 crore to generate e-invoice on a centralised government portal for business-to-business (B2B) sales to curb GST evasion, an official said.

The GST Council, which will meet on June 20, will take a final decision on the turnover threshold for issuance of e-invoice for B2B sales after consultation with States.

Analysis of return filing shows that as many as 68,041 businesses have reported a turnover of over ₹50 crore and accounted for 66.6 per cent of total GST paid in 2017-18.

Further, while these businesses account for just 1.02 per cent of GST payers, they make up almost 30 per cent of the B2B invoices generated in the system.

With e-invoice generation, entities with turnover above ₹50 crore would be saved the duplication of of filing returns and uploading invoices. From the government’s side, this would help in curbing invoice misuse and tax evasion.

The official further said that under the current system, there is a gap between the time of invoice generation and filing of sales returns. The number of entities filing monthly summary sales return GSTR-3B and paying GST is higher than those filing outward supply return GSTR-1, in which invoice-wise details have to be filed. The ministry is planning to roll out the e-invoice system by September.

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