The food bill presented to this reporter at an Old Delhi restaurant last week mentioned a Goods and Services Tax Identification Number (GSTIN), but a free-to-download Android app helped me scan the bill and find the number to be fake. Obviously, the restaurant was collecting GST from the diners but was not depositing it with the government. The app, Peridot, developed by the GST suvidha provider (GSP) IRIS Business Services, enables a consumer to not only verify the authenticity of GSTIN on invoices but also access the last few GST returns filed by the business entity she deals with. In fact, the Google Play Store shows over a dozen such apps developed by Lyra, Vishal Works, Madrecha Solutions and RP Developer, to name a few. However, these apps are not yet very popular; even the best-performing one has less than 500 downloads. The free app developed by Lyra has an additional facility of identifying taxpayers even on the basis of old VAT numbers. “If it turns out that the business you have been dealing with hasn’t deposited the tax collected from the consumer, then he or she can decline to pay the GST charged,” Gautam Mahanti, business head at IRIS, said. He added that the idea behind making this app available free of cost was to empower consumers and bring about transparency and accountability in businesses-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions.
GSPs are IT companies selected by the GST Network — the IT backbone for GST — to use the application programming interface (API) providing by GSTN to build customised solutions for their clients. These companies act as a bridge between taxpayers and the GSTN system. Although GST-related information on any business can be accessed though a government site, http://www.gst.gov.in, these apps provide a simpler and more handy way to do the same. Apart from consumers, a business entity can also utilise this app, without subscribing to the paid package, to identify the best suppliers it can engage with. A supplier who is regular with tax filings will invariably be preferred by businesses as it ensures that input tax credit are redeemed without any delay and cash flows remain healthy.
Similarly, some of the GSPs have developed technologies to cut down on the compliance burden involved in filing the triplicate comprehensive GST returns (GSTR-1, 2, 3). Businesses say reduced compliance burden has meant lower costs to them as filing monthly returns can often require substantial man-hours every month, which most small businesses cannot afford. WeP Solutions, a GSP, provides a tool generating invoices on the system. A software extracts relevant information from these invoices and compiles the final returns to be filed.
“Even a small business generating about 5,000 invoices every month can feel the pressure of not only uploading these on the portal but also furnishing the individual line item details in GSTR-1. With our system, the entire process is reduced to only uploads while the returns are auto-generated and filed to the GSTN portal,” an official at WeP Solutions told FE. The solution takes care of hundreds of different kinds of validations that a taxpayers would go through on the portal. It also provides options for different types of invoices — business-to-consumer, business-to-business as well as those for reverse charge mechanism.