The article headlined "SARS amnesty for hidden assets a flop", published on August 21, was tinged with biased reporting that creates a negative perception of the South African Revenue Service’s work. We wish to correct the inaccuracies as follows: As of August 21, the number of Special Voluntary Disclosure Programme (SVDP) applications was at 585. This excludes those who opted to make use of the normal VDP procedures to disclose offshore earnings. The report further stated that the SVDP programme "had so far brought to light hardly more than a 10th of the nearly R40bn hoped for". As was demonstrated in the 2016 Budget Review, where no revenue was budgeted around the impact of the introduction of the SVDP, it is difficult to anticipate the final number of applications or the final value of disclosures that the SVDP will yield. SARS will gain a better appreciation of the extent of offshore assets held from September 2017 onwards, when the automatic exchange of information under the Co...
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