GST Basics #24: Rule 138 — The E-Way Bill and When You Actually Need One

The document that causes most roadside GST trouble: what an e-way bill is, the Rs. 50,000 trigger, who has to generate it, why Part B matters, how long it lasts, and what happens if it is missing.

Instalment #23 dealt with what happens after your lorry is stopped. This one deals with the document whose absence causes most of those stoppages in the first place: the e-way bill under Rule 138 of the CGST Rules, 2017.

An e-way bill is, in CBIC's own words, "an electronic document generated on the GST portal evidencing movement of goods." It is not a tax return and it is not an invoice. It is a movement permit, and Section 68 of the CGST Act is what allows an officer at a check-post to ask for it.

The trigger is value, not sale. CBIC's e-way bill flyer (https://gstcouncil.gov.in/sites/default/files/e-version-gst-flyers/51_GST_Flyer_Chapter18.pdf) puts the threshold at a consignment value of Rs. 50,000, and it applies whether or not the movement is a supply. Goods going out for job work, goods coming back from a customer, stock moved between your own branches, goods sent for exhibition, machinery going to a site — all of these need one once the value crosses the limit. That is the point most traders get wrong, and it is exactly the point the GST Appellate Tribunal decided against a trader last week when he argued that an excavator he owned needed no e-way bill because he was not selling it.

Who generates it depends on the transport. If you move the goods in your own or a hired vehicle, or by rail, air or vessel, you generate it. If you hand the consignment to a road transporter and neither you nor your buyer has generated one, the flyer says the responsibility falls on the transporter. Where a principal sends goods to a job worker, the principal generates it.

The bill has two halves. Part A carries the commercial detail — the recipient's GSTIN, the delivery pin code, the invoice or challan, the value, the HSN and the reason for transport. Part B carries the vehicle. The bill is complete only when both are filled, which is why a Part A generated in the office and never completed with a vehicle number is no protection on the road.

Validity runs by distance in day-long blocks, so a long haul buys more days than a short one. The flyer's own distance slab is one of the details most often amended and the flyer carries no print date, so read the current Rule 138 before relying on a number. An e-way bill can be cancelled electronically within twenty-four hours of generation, but not once it has been verified in transit.

If you get it wrong, two provisions bite. The goods and the vehicle can be detained under Section 129, which instalment #23 sets out and which CBIC's Circular No. 41/15/2018-GST details form by form (https://cbic-gst.gov.in/pdf/circularno-41-cgst.pdf). And the flyer notes a penalty under Section 122 of Rs. 10,000 or the tax sought to be evaded, whichever is higher — check the current section for the figure.

Related reading: #23 on detention, #15 on the tax invoice that travels with the goods.

Topics:rule 138e-way billEWB-01section 68part Bjob workbranch transfertransportersection 129GST basicsChennai GSTTamil Nadu GST

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