According to a notification the Board said that the waiver will be applicable from December 1, 2020 till end of September, indicating that compliance would be required from October 1, 2021.
Government had waived the penalty for non-compliance back in November 2020, for the period between December 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, while settling compliance date to April 1, 2021. It then further extended the period till June 30, setting compliance date at July 1, 2021.
Experts said the extension was in response to demands made by industry to the government.
“This will ease the compliance for large taxpayers and also for value chain of large companies,” said Rajat Mohan, senior partner at AMRG Associates.
Industry had sought for a three month delay in implementation of dynamic quick response (QR) code on electronic invoices from business to consumer transactions, citing lack of clarity in law and inadequate preparedness at the ground level on its own end.
QR code for B2C transactions is meant to encourage digital payments by the buyers but can potentially be used to check tax leakages as well. It would have an impact on all consumer facing businesses including retail, restaurants, hotels and so on.
In February, the Board had exempted nonbanking financial companies, insurance companies, banks and financial institutions, and exports from using dynamic quick response or QR codes on e- invoices issued to consumers. Exports have been exempted from the QR code requirement since such shipments are treated as business-to-business supplies.