FAQ's on GST

GST or Goods & Service Tax is the Indirect form of tax that has replaced multiple taxes including the VAT System in India, since its implementation on July 1st, 2017.

The GST Act was passed in the Parliament on March 29th, 2017.

GST is considered to be a 'comprehensive, multi-staged & destination-based' system of taxation.

In total there are 19 different types of GST Returns at present, based on, the type of business, origin (residential/non-residential), turnover, monthly, annual, etc. The basic GST Returns that need to be filed by all the normal/regular taxpayers regularly are-

•GSTR-1 : This is the monthly Sales Return Filing that reflects the details of all the outward supplies of the taxpayer.
•GSTR-2A : This is the auto-populated read-only draft of all the Purchases made by the taxpayers in a tax period. This is auto-populated from the sales returns GSTR-1 filed by all the suppliers. As a Recipient, one cannot make changes to the GSTR-2A. •GSTR-3B : This is the filing through which the taxpayer discharges all his tax liabilities, by paying cash or adjusting the ITC. This is a consolidated summary of the monthly Sales, Purchases & ITC.
•GSTR-9 : This is the annual return that needs to be filed at the end of every year as the consolidated summary of GSTR-1, GSTR-3B, GSTR-2A, & ITC claims or demands.
•GSTR-9C : This is the part where the taxpayers need to get their accounts audited by a CA & the audit report along with the reconciliation statement is submitted on the GST Portal.

Reconciliation under GST means nothing but the matching of various reports to identify & remove any mismatches or errors present.

Reconciliation ensures that the records match from both the buyer & seller end, making the transactions authentic & correct to the best of their knowledge.

This way there shall be no false or hidden transactions in the Return Filings. The most common reconciliations are those of, GSTR1 & GSTR-3B, GSTR-2A & Purchase Books, Annual Reconciliation, GSTR-1 & e-Way Bill data.

e-Invoices are the normally generated invoices that need to be authenticated on the Invoice Registration Portal.

Post successful authentication, the invoice is assigned with a unique IRN (Invoice Registration Number) & a QR code and the invoice becomes an e-Invoice.

After the implementation of the e-Invoicing System, only e-invoices shall be considered as valid.

e-Way Bills are mandatory documents to be carried by the transporter of goods worth Rs. 50,000 &/or more, while transporting such goods both inter & intra-state.

e-Way Bills are generated based on Invoices & are invoice supporting documents. It has the invoice details, item details & transporter details furnished.

Reverse Charge Mechanism under GST means that the taxes need to be paid by the recipient of goods directly to the Government.

In the normal system, the recipient pays the tax liabilities to their supplier who then pays this tax to the Government by filing their GSTR-1 & GSTR-3B.

Under special circumstances such as, if the supplier is a non-registered person, Reverse Charge is applicable & the recipient must pay the GST directly to the Government.

Input Tax Credit or ITC is the tax that the taxpayer has paid at the time of purchase of Goods or Services for making goods in a particular tax period.

The taxpayer can use this already paid tax to reduce their tax liabilities while making a sale of the finished Good, in the same tax period.

For say, a taxpayer Mr. Amar pays a tax of Rs. 50,000 on the purchase of leather for his Shoe Business.

On selling the finished product, the Shoe, Mr. Amar has a tax liability of Rs. 1 Lakh, in the same tax period. Then he can claim for ITC of Rs. 50,000 that he paid earlier & he can adjust it with their tax liability.

After which Mr. Amar will only have to pay Rs. 50,000. A taxpayer can claim maximum ITC by making their Reconciliation error-free, clean & thorough.

With GSTHero's Auto-reconciliation feature, this shall be a no-brainer for the taxpayer. Click here(demo link) to see how you can claim 100% ITC with GSTHero.

GST APIs are a government initiative to provide online GST Services to taxpayers to make their work simpler, through site-to-site integrations & increase compliance with the GST System.

GSTHero is one of government-appointed GST Suvidha Providers, that provides the users with seamless, most relevant & top-notch GST Solutions to Businesses.

GSTHero provides facilities related to GST Return Filings, e-Way Bills, e-Invoicing, Reconciliation, Annual Returns, etc, to both Tax Practitioners & Businesses.

GSTHero provides solutions for multiple generic & customized ERPs, Tally SAP, Marg, Oracle, etc.

Goods under GST System are bifurcated & categorized into categories, as per which the taxees on them shall be levied. These categories actually decide the Tax Rates of the goods.

Different classes of goods fall under different tax rates. For say, luxury goods fall under higher tax rate (28%) & essential goods fall under the low one (as low as 5%).

Commonly there are 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% & 28%. There are other tax rates also, for Fuel, Alcohol, Gems & Precious stones, etc.

It is a scheme given by the Government for small taxpayers, relieving them from the tedious tasks of filing GST frequently & collecting GST from small Businesses without actually troubling them.

Composition Scheme made compliance simpler for small Businesses & helped the Government in maintaining the revenue inflow.

Under the Scheme, the taxpayer need not maintain a rate-wise breakup of his sales, & the tax liability depends on their turnovers.

This reduces the burden of high tax liabilities for small businesses.

Taxpayers under the Composition Scheme need not file their GSTR-1, GSTR-3B & GSTR-9.

Instead, they need to file GSTR-4 which is a quarterly filing of taxes & GSTR-9A which is the annual filing for this Scheme.

It has all the details of the quarterly filings.