When invoices flooded social media

On Saturday, as the country subscribed to a new indirect tax regime, bills featuring the goods and services tax (GST) component evoked considerable curiosity and frenzy among consumers.

Many of them took to social media to share their bills and invoices — restaurant and grocery bills, department store receipts, and even online orders.

While some felt their bill amount was lower, others rued the escalation in prices.

Various government Twitter handles, too, launched online engagement drives to create awareness regarding the new tax structure. For instance, the official Twitter handle of the Press Information Bureau asked users to share their ‘GST moment’ by tweeting a picture of their first GST receipt.

How India Inc reacted

Several FMCG and consumer durable companies decided to close their B2B invoicing for the weekend so that they could get their internal processes in place and generate their first GST invoice on Monday.

Others, such as restaurants, and retailers such as Big Bazaar, began issuing their first consumer invoices at midnight as they were running special midnight sales.

A spokesperson for Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages said: “At 1:23 today (Saturday), we cut the first GST distributor invoice in our history. It was invoiced to a distributor in Karnataka. We have successfully transitioned to the GST era.”

For small traders and shopkeepers, issuing their first GST bills was the first big step.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, Confederation of All India Traders, said: “Traders across the country did their best to follow the GST law on raising invoices despite lack of knowledge about tax rates, HSN Code, etc. Most of them managed [to adopt the new tax regime] by consulting fellow traders, tax consultants and trader associations. However, those traders who do not have computers did raise manual invoice for uploading the same on the GST Network portal.”

Traders associations have urged the government not to penalise traders for procedural lapses till March 2018.

Meanwhile, the Retailers Association of India reiterated the need for simpler bill formats.

It pointed out that the format of invoice contains details that may not be relevant for B2C trade, as the customers, being retail customers, would not be claiming input credit.

The association has recommended that some GST requirements should not be applicable for invoices issued by retailers, such as the need to capture GST rates for each article and providing tax details, as it believes that the end consumers are more concerned with the net sale price.

Also, it has demanded that providing information such as the HSN (Harmonised System of Nomenclature) Codes recorded by the retailers (at the back end) not be a requirement. It has also pointed out that since retail generates many cash memos, it is practically difficult to sign each invoice by an authorised signatory.

“We request that retailers should be allowed to issue retail cash memo/invoice which has details of all articles sold and net price realised for each article. All prices billed will be inclusive of applicable GST. These bills should not be required to be signed either physically or digitally,” the Association recommended.