Basti’s milling belt runs on a season, a gate, and a set of farmers and arhatiyas who do not all speak GST. The Act does not have a season. The file that survives September is the one that recorded both facts as they happened, not as they were remembered in the heat of the due date.
Say what the mill is doing
A mill may buy paddy, mill for others, trade rice, sell broken rice and husk, and hire out a dryer. Those are different supplies. Mixing them in one sales column is how input credit, exemption claims and the tax-audit quantitative particulars all fail together. A chart of accounts that names paddy, rice, broken rice, husk, gunny, milling charges and job-work is not sophistication. It is the minimum.
The gate and the bag
- Bags in and bags out, with a weight. A weighbridge slip that can be sampled is worth more than a closing stock certificate signed in a hurry.
- Farmer purchases that are exempt, and trader purchases that are not, kept apart.
- Job-work lots identified as the farmer’s or the trader’s, not the mill’s stock.
- Electricity allocated, not dumped in ‘miscellaneous’.
GST, Udyam and the bank
Udyam classification will be read against the ITR and the GST annual return. A mill that tells the bank it is micro and tells the tax-audit report a different turnover will be asked why. Additional place of business for a second shed, or for a godown on the Khalilabad road, should be on the GST registration before the first e-way bill is blocked. See Udyam in Basti and cold storage and agro-processing.
When to write
The useful moment is not 29 September. It is the week the first paddy of the season comes in, when the chart of accounts can still be set. Write to the firm with the facts of the mill — own paddy or job-work, one shed or two, and whether a tax audit is already in view.
Questions this page usually meets
Is milling always a manufacture?
It depends on who owns the paddy. Milling a farmer’s paddy and returning rice is often job-work. Buying paddy and selling rice is manufacture and trading. The books have to say which is which, every lot.
Do rice mills in Basti need a tax audit?
If turnover crosses the section 44AB threshold as applicable for the year, yes. Quantitative stock of paddy, rice, broken rice and husk is what Form 3CD will test. See who needs a tax audit.