E-Waybill Integration with FASTag

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Recently, the Government of India has integrated the E-Way Bill (EWB) system with FasTag, RFID.

E-Way Bill or Electronic-Way Bill

• It is usually a unique bill number generated for the specific consignment involving the movement of goods.
• It needs to be generated before transporting or shipping goods worth more than Rs 50,000 within the state or interstate with the exemption to precious items such as gold. 
• The physical copy of the e-way bill must be present with the transporter or the person in charge of the conveyance and should include information such as goods, recipient, consignor and transporter.
• It is a mechanism to ensure that goods being transported comply with the GST Law and is a tool to track the movement of goods and check tax evasion.
• On average, 25 lakh goods vehicle movements from more than 800 tolls are reported daily to the e-way bill system.

Image Courtesy: SaralGST

FASTag

• It is an electronic toll collection system, operated by The National Highways Authority of India(NHAI).
  • Based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, FASTag is affixed on the windscreen of vehicles.
•  In other words, FASTags are prepaid rechargeable tags for toll collection.
•  FASTags do not have any expiry date, hence, they can be used as long as they are not tampered with and are readable at the toll plazas.
• Vehicles that have FASTag enabled on them, do not have to stop at toll gates as charges are deducted from the prepaid or bank account when the vehicle is moving under the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) programme

• From 15th February 2021, FASTag has become compulsory for all vehicles across the country.

Relevance of Integration 

• Through this, the GST authorities will now be able to track real-time data of commercial vehicle (CV) movement on highways.
• It will enable tax officers to undertake live vigilance in respect of EWB compliances by businesses and will aid in preventing revenue leakage by real-time identification of cases of recycling and/or non-generation of EWBs.

• Tax officers can now access reports on vehicles that have passed the selected tolls without EWBs in the past few minutes. 
• Any suspicious vehicles and vehicles of EWBs generated by suspicious taxpayer GSTINs, that have passed the selected toll on a near real-time basis, can also be viewed in this report

Source:IE