India: The following tax explanation applies to companies who have a registered address in India and Exotel renders services to them in India.


There is a tax applicable for the services provided by Exotel and we do charge it. We charge 18.00% GST (Government-mandated) at the time of writing this article and is subject to change.


What is a Receipt Voucher?


This is simply a receipt or an acknowledgment of the payment made which includes the GST component as well. For instance, if you have made a payment of Rs.1,180/- it essentially comprises of payment of Rs.1,000/- and a tax component(GST) of Rs.180/- (18% of the service value).


The receipt voucher documents are shared with a series beginning with RD0000.

 

What is an Invoice?


An invoice is generated on or before the 5th of each month determining the actual usage of services. For instance, if you had credits worth Rs.500/- the invoice will be generated for Rs.590/- along with the 18% GST. 


The invoice documents are shared with a series beginning with:


For prepaid customers: DR19SINXXXX

For postpaid customers: DO19SINXXXX

 

What is the GST credit which will be shown in the client’s portal?


For prepaid customers:


Since the GST component is shown both in the invoice and the receipt voucher, the confusion of which value reflects in the GST portal arises.


Under GST Act, the client will be able to claim the credit only based on actual usage made by him during the month – which gets reflected in the invoices raised and not the Receipt voucher. An invoice is a pre-requisite document to claim input credit and such invoice will be issued by us only upon ‘supply’ of services by us, i.e., your usage of our services. 


Example: Let us assume that you pay INR 11,800/- (10,000 + 18% taxes) to recharge your account on 05-Apr-2019.

You will be given a receipt voucher (Series starting RDSIN19XXXXXX) on the date of payment.


Say, if you had usage of INR 5000/- from 01-Apr-19 to 30-Apr-19. An invoice will be raised on 01-May-19 for April month’s usage for INR 5,900/- (INR 5,000+18% taxes for Series starting DR19SINXXXXX). 


While preparing the GSTR1, we have to file the details of invoices raised for the month. So we will be filing the DR19SINXXX series for all the customers. Hence the input GST that you can take will be INR 900/- i.e, on the actual usage made by them, and not INR 1800 paid by them on the receipt voucher/-.


The balance amount will be reflected based on the usage in the subsequent months.


This is done because as per Section 16(1),(2) of the GST Act, Input credit can be claimed only based on utilization and not on payment.


For postpaid customers :


Postpaid customers can claim input GST credits on the invoices shared by us dated the first of every month.

 

Why is the GST component missing in the invoice?


For prepaid clients for whom we have received payments before 01-July-2017, we would have technically collected Service Tax. The credits granted for those payments which remain unutilized by the end of June would have been subsequently utilized in the month of July for which we started raising GST invoices. Since we have already collected Service Tax for that usage, we cannot charge them again with GST, because of which we have shown it as a Non-taxable service*. As these invoices do not have any GST component in them, though these have got generated after 01-July-2017, they do not bear any credits for the client in the client’s GST portal.

(*) Non-taxable service shows the value of credits utilized from their credit balance as of 30-June-2017 as per section 142(11) of GST Act, 2017


When will the credits reflect on the client’s portal?


The filing is done on the 11th of every subsequent month and the credits will be reflected for the clients in 4-5 working days post that.


Changes in Invoices:


Change of GSTIN can be done until the 5th of the subsequent month of invoicing. For instance, if the invoice is run on 01 November, the changes can be entertained until 05 December.

It is the same for change of address too.


Modifications of details can be done only in the following cases:

  • The customer was earlier recorded with an incorrect GSTIN and wants to get it changed.
  • We will not be able to revise it for a customer recorded as Unregistered earlier.


How is TDS deducted?


TDS is deducted @ 2% on the total taxable value(usage value in the invoice) and not the total invoice value. The reason is, that the invoice value is inclusive of the GST component, and deducting TDS on that value will technically lead to tax on tax. Exotel currently falls under the 2% TDS rate by virtue of section 194J(1)(b) - Fees for Technical Services. Please click here to know more about Section - 194J.


International (Everywhere other than India): The following tax explanation applies to companies who are registered outside India and Exotel renders services to them outside India.

 

Presently, the export of services is zero-rated so there will not be any GST charged for any international clients.

Here is a link to the official document by CBEC(Central Board of Excise and Customs) where Section 16(1) of the IGST Act, 2017 states the above.


For Indian Registered Companies using our International services: 


We kindly request you to place a request with our Customer Happiness Team on the below-mentioned contact details to provide you with the tax invoice with the GST component. 
 

This is how we deal with prepaid invoicing!


If you have any questions or concerns, please connect with us using the chat widget on your Exotel Dashboard or Whatsapp us on 08088919888.