Major heads and Minor Heads in Cash Ledger on GST Portals
What is the Electronic Cash Ledger?
The Electronic Cash Ledger contains a summary of all the deposits/payments made by a taxpayer. In the ledger, information is kept minor head-wise for each major head. For convenience of user, the ledger is displayed major head-wise i.e., IGST, CGST, SGST/UTGST, and CESS. Each major head is divided into five minor heads: Tax, Interest, Penalty, Fee, and Others. It can be accessed under the post-login mode on the GST portal under Services > Ledgers > Electronic Cash Ledger
Electronic Cash Ledger is an account of the taxpayer maintained by GST system reflecting the cash deposits in recognized Banks and payments of taxes and other dues made by the taxpayer. The Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) and Tax Collected at Source (TCS) are also accounted for in the Electronic Cash Ledger as cash deposits of the taxpayer.
A registered taxpayer can make cash deposits in the recognized Banks through the prescribed modes to the Electronic Cash Ledger using any of the Online or Offline modes permitted by the GST Portal. The Cash deposits can be used for making payment(s) like tax liability, interest, penalties, fee, and others.
The Electronic Cash Ledger has four Major Heads IGST, CGST, SGST/UTGST, and CESS. Each of these Major Heads have the five following Minor Heads:
1. Tax
2. Interest
3. Penalty
4. Fee
5. Others
When a taxpayer creates a Challan, the taxpayer chooses the amounts to be added to each Minor Head within Each Major Head. Once the payment against the Challan is made successfully and the CIN communicated to the GST system, the Electronic Cash Ledger gets updated with the funds under the Major and Minor Heads respectively as per the Challan. Cross utilization of funds across major or minor heads is NOT possible once payment is made.
Let us understand this better with an example. A taxpayer made a cash deposit of INR 1000 to IGST – Tax through net banking. After successful payment, the Bank reference number communicated by the bank along with the CIN to the GST system will be reflected in the Electronic Cash Ledger as reference number. The tax payer can utilise this cash deposit of INR 1000 in the cash ledger to make payment ONLY of the IGST – Tax liability by debiting the Cash Ledger.
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