TAX STATISTICS BRIEFING
Shenanigans led to SARS’ fall from grace
The Davis committee will now take a hard look at tax administration, appointments and governance at the tax office, writes Hilary Joffe
The South African Revenue Service’s (SARS’s) release of the annual tax statistics bulletin in Pretoria on Tuesday was quite poorly attended. This was not too surprising given that most journalists preferred the more interesting fare on offer at a briefing by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in Johannesburg, which was on at about the same time. The clash between the two briefings seemed to be yet another small indicator of the tensions between SARS and its parent ministry, especially given that the tax statistics publication is a joint effort between the revenue service and the Treasury, which came up with the concept almost a decade ago. But it was surely an indicator too that the SARS story is not really about revenue these days. Instead, SARS hits the headlines regularly as a series of ever more bizarre and distasteful events unfold at an institution which was once one of SA’s most highly regarded and whose credibility is crucial to its ability to collect taxes effectively. We have...
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