TAX YEAR REPORT
HILARY JOFFE: Nene shoots straight in telling SARS story
There was no trumpeting about R1-trillion in tax collections. Nor was there apparently any attempt to flatter the figures to make it look like the South African Revenue Service (SARS) had exceeded its revenue target. Instead, with SARS commissioner Tom Moyane suspended and clearly on his way out at last, the tax authority told it straight on Tuesday in announcing the outcomes of the 2017-18 tax year, which ended at midnight on Saturday. It was a transparent, if sobering, story. At R1.216-trillion, revenue came in 0.06% short of February’s budget estimate, which the Treasury had revised down by more than R48bn from the February 2017 projection in response to weak growth and declining tax compliance. This time it was Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, tasked with announcing the numbers at a briefing at SARS’s Brooklyn offices, who made it clear in every way that the revenue service’s rogue days under Moyane were over and that the finance minister’s authority over the taxman had been rest...
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