Original Invoice in case of E-Invoice

Firstly, E-invoice is not a replacement for your original tax invoice.

Section 16 of CGST Act also says to claim ITC one of the conditions is that he is in possession of a tax invoice or debit note issued by a supplier registered under this Act, or such other tax paying documents as may be prescribed;

I think you are legally not allowed to claim ITC based on E-invoice i.e, without tax invoice or debit note or such other tax paying documents as may be prescribed;

So, better to get tax invoices to avoid litigations.

Thanks for your response Vikas , let me re-frame my query. We do have the invoice and it has QR code imprinted on it. And the invoice is received in soft copy on email. 

So my query is whether we need to ask the vendor to share original hard copy through courier or the scanned copy would be okay. Because i was of a view that e-invoice (i.e. QR code on invoice) is actually an initiative by the Govt for digitalization of transactions so there would not be a need to share hard copies through courier as long as we receive it in soft copy.

Please enlighten me on this point regarding original signed hard copy of invoices.

I think a scanned copy would be enough for you and no problem for at all for you.

But for the supplier, GST law requires taxpayers to issue a specified number of tax invoice copies. Let’s have a look at the number of invoices we have to issue 

• In case of a supply of goods, the supplier shall issue 3 copies of the invoice
  • Original for recepient
  • Duplicate for the transporter, and
  • Triplicate for supplier 
•  Whereas, in the case of a supply of service, he shall issue only 2 copies of the invoice
  • Original for recepient
  • Duplicate for supplier

This is what the provision says regarding the issuing rules for invoices. I think no notification is released yet regarding the same.

Hard copy is not mandatory but the QR Code present in the invoice should be scannable and provide valid information
Know more about einvoice under GST