GST billing software for services

The Indian government plans to introduce the Goods and Service Tax (GST) in July 2017 with the hopes to streamline the tax system, make it more transparent and easier to comply with. Some other positive changes of GST would be tackling the inconsistencies across the belt of indirect taxes or making tax across transactions more trackable.

One of the sectors that will be greatly impacted by GST is the services sector. For instance, now, all service providers have to register only once, at the central state, but in GST, they will have to register in every state where they operate. Even though this will have a negative effect on the activities of many companies, individual states are in favour of this measure to ensure their portion of the revenue.

Note for Exporters: Are you supplying services outside of India? You probably know that exports are taxed at ZERO rate under GST, however, be cautios, not all supplies of services are deemed as export. Make sure you're taxating at the correct rate. Read more

Some key changes for service providers:

Now

General tax rate of around 15 % (including cesses)

Single centralized registration system for paying service tax

File up to 3 service tax returns in one year

Difficult to get input tax credit on certain services.

GST

Tax rate of 18 %, up to 20 %

File up to 37 returns/state, in every state they operate, every year

Input tax credit can be claimed on SGST/CGST and IGST

Some key changes for service providers:

Compliance: Difficult to keep track of all invoices and properly file all tax returns
Increased costs: bigger taxes might make services less attractive to clients, causing loses.
Cash flow: GST returns are filed up to 3 times/month, businesses need to make sure their invoices are paid on time to keep their operations running.
GST implementation: having allocated budget for adopting GST properly in their business