Big relief for mid-scale companies, government postpones QR code requirements to March end next year

Mumbai: In what is set to give relief to several companies, the government has postponed the requirement of generating QR code under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) framework.

The government on Sunday said that it is postponing the requirement to generate and then use QR code for all business to customer (B2C) transactions. Companies would now be required to be prepared with the QR code compliance by March end next year.

Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY said, “The Central government has provided the much required relaxation for the businesses by waiving the penalty for non-compliance with QR code requirement till March 2021 for B2C transactions. As many of the industry players were not ready, this waiver would give the requisite time for the industry to be ready for this compliance.”


Many industry associations had reached out to the government and said that several companies are not yet ready for this and it could cause huge disruptions. Associations had said that mid scale companies’ ERP systems were not ready and this could lead to huge disruptions in their working capital. As per several estimates this could have led to at least RS 20,000 crore of working capital getting stuck.

The government’s relief would mean that companies would get additional time to update their ERP systems to the QR code requirements.