How GSTN is going to change the way India does Business

The scale of change because of GST can be enumerated by just considering the fact that, after its implementation almost every SMB in India will come under the purview of a unified Taxation System. According to the GSTN’s Chief Executive Prakash Kumar “The network is built for about 70 million taxpayers, who will upload about three billion (3 Crore) business-to-business (B2B) invoices every month across the country”.

Now, Let’s try to understand what Mr. Prakash Kumar meant by that statement. First we need to know who these SMBs are and how they operate? For instance, a provision Store owner makes purchases from a distributor, while Purchasing these goods the invoices are generated for both the Store Owner and Distributor and in some cases for the end buyer (retail buyers). But the irony is that the revenue is evaluated on the amount of stock (sold & unsold) rather than considering the purchases. To be Tax compliant at the end of financial year, the Retailer would hire a CA and hand all bills and POS transactions to him who in turn will evaluate the same and save his taxes one way or the other.

Post GST into effect, SMBs in India will not use multiple points and application software for accounting, but rather upload invoices on the GST Network (GSTN). GST will completely restructure the way India does business. As the name suggests, GSTN is a network for Indian Businesses to upload their invoices for Tax processing and availing tax benefit.

Once the GSTN is in place every time a retailer makes a purchase he needs to notify the same to the network which will have a ripple effect in the entire Eco-system. The system design is featured in a way that all parties involved in a product life cycle i.e manufacturer to retailer have to be in sync. For example, when a retailer makes a purchase he needs to approve the invoice so that the distributor can claim tax return through GSTN. Hence for the distributor it is a track of goods he bought (from manufacturer) and sold (to retailer).

The various tiers of the GSTN :

Benefits of GST Network:

• If a business uploads invoice for the goods purchased, the taxes paid will get segregated on the online GSTN Account and at the time of claiming the tax, the documentation for the businesses will reduce considerably which will result in the reduced time for processing the returns.

• Businesses can also claim the cost of depreciation on the goods purchased on GSTN, as once the invoices are in the network, the GST Credit will get automatically deducted from the purchase price. Hence, they can use them to calculate the depreciation cost on the goods and then claim it online.

The network will hence tie up the tax claiming process and the verification will become easy as both the supplier and the purchaser of any commodity will upload their invoices on the network.

To view our chat with Mr. Nikhil Kumar, Expert in GST about GSTN network and its implication of Indian SMBs visit our youtube channel.