Maintenance of Accounts and other record in GST Law

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Maintenance of Accounts and other record in GST Law

				By: Sanjeev Singhal
				March 18, 2017
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Contents

No specific list of accounts or record has been prescribed in Section 53 of GST Law. It only talked about the true and correct accounts of production or manufacture of goods, inward and outward supply of goods and /or services, accounts of stock of goods, record of input credit availed and output tax payable or paid.

Accounts and other Record

Every registered taxable person shall maintain at his principal place of business [as mentioned in the certificate of registration] the following record

Accounts of production or manufacture of goods

Record of inward and outward supply of goods and / or services

Record of stock of goods

Record of input tax credit availed

Record of output tax payable or paid

All other documents as may be prescribed

Commissioner/ chief commissioner may notify the class of person to maintain additional accounts or documents.

Taxable person whose turnover during financial year exceed the prescribed limit , will get his accounts audited by chartered accountants or cost accountant. Copy of such audited accounts with reconciliation statement as provided in sec. 39[2] shall be submitted to proper officer.

Where taxable person fails to account for goods stolen , destroyed , disposed off , the proper officer in this case determine the amount of tax payable on such goods which has not been accounted for and proceed with provision of Section 66 and 67 of the act.

Every owner or operator of warehouse or godown shall maintain record of consigner, consignee and all other relevant details of the goods as prescribed whether person is registered or not.

Period of retention of accounts

Every RTP shall keep the record of all books of accounts and other record and shall retain the same until the expiry of 60 month from the due date of furnishing the annual return .

Example :

Record of FY 2017-18 shall be retain till 31.12.2023.

Provided that where RTP is in appeal, revision or any other proceeding before any appellate or tribunal or court , whether filed by him or by department, or under investigation of offence , shall retains the books for period of one year after the disposal of such proceeding or the period specified above which shall be later.

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Author is practicing chartered accountant in Gurgaon and having specialization in Service Tax and Haryana VAT. He can be reached at sanjeev.singhal@skaca.in. WWW. skaca.in

By: Sanjeev Singhal - March 18, 2017

Discussions to this article

Nice article sir.

If all the details like invoice wise sales, invoice wise purchase, debit note / credit note details, input set off detail, output tax detail etc. Is furnished by a registered tax payer in online website i.e. GSTN then why would an assessee is required to keep records for 5 years . In the existing tax regime the total sales, purchase and other detail are given in summay level. Recently only some states have stated collecting invoice wise detail report. Therefore keeping record is justifiable atleast for states where only summary level info is submitted.

But in GST whether the record need to be kept for such a long period, need to be thought of. Thanks.

By: Ganeshan Kalyani
Dated: March 20, 2017

Sh.Ganeshan Kalyani Ji is absolutely right. Every department is going on paperless and even Supreme Court has expressed to achieve the target of being paperless. When original docs are uploaded into GSTN, these would be saved for ever and not for only five years.