Tax season opens amid challenges
Low economic growth and poor tax compliance threaten revenue
The tax season opens on Monday, with the tax authority facing a huge challenge in meeting ambitious revenue targets in the context of lower than anticipated economic growth and poor tax compliance. Finance Minister Nhanhla Nene and South African Revenue Service (SARS) acting commissioner Mark Kingon will host an event on Monday to mark the opening of the tax season and are likely to highlight the challenges ahead. Despite these challenges, Kingon has ambitions of raising tax revenue by 20% by tackling low tax compliance and strengthening SARS’s capacity to deal with its large business clients, who account for about two thirds of corporate tax revenue and make a significant contribution to VAT and PAYE. This capacity deteriorated after former SARS commissioner Tom Moyane demolished SARS’s large business centre. Achieving a 20% growth would be a sharp reversal of the entrenched trend, which saw revenue collections fall short of budget targets in each of the past four fiscal years, wit...
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