ROB ROSE: Resisting taxes — is it moral?
Sars commissioner Tom Moyane’s unbridled attack on KPMG shows that the tax authority doesn’t know what it doesn’t know — and that is ominous
It’s becoming increasingly clear that if government is serious about plugging the likely R44bn chasm in its revenue for this year, the man heading the SA Revenue Service (Sars), Tom Moyane, is a distinct liability. This week, he held a press conference in which he sought to claim that despite the fact KPMG was withdrawing its work on the "rogue unit", Sars had the "intellectual property" to the report so wouldn’t accept this recantation. It was a bizarre response, not least because saying you own KPMG’s "intellectual property" is a lot like boasting that you drew up McKinsey’s ethics code, or that you chaired Eskom’s governance committee. But it illustrates that as much as Moyane might try to exude an aura of calmness, he’s deeply worried.Moyane, who has a long-standing relationship with President Jacob Zuma dating back to exile in 1976, has only been in charge of Sars for three years, but it seems to be a husk of an organisation today. Leaving aside the politics (his claim that he ...
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