SARS making steady progress in tackling criminal and illicit activities

The South African Revenue Services (SARS) says while progress is slow in tackling criminal as well as illicit activities, it is steady. SARS appeared virtually before the Standing Committee on Finance on its strategic and annual performance plans. It says there’s a growth of 9.7 % in revenue collected for the financial year under review compared to the previous financial year.

SARS says it has recorded an increase in net revenue collection by R123 billion, adding that the number of those who are complying with paying taxes has increased to 64.2 % while trade facilitation has increased by R606 billion. However, not all is smooth sailing, as sometimes it has to recover monies lost to the fiscus through wrongdoing.

“In terms of criminal and illicit activities, we have recovered R4.4 billion which includes half a billion rand of state capture-related money and we have raised assessments to the value of R4 billion in the past financial year and we have ongoing activities 42 active tax projects with 540 investigations valued at R2 billion. So, there’s lot of work happening, progress is slow but steady,” says SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter

Grey listing

On the issue of grey listing, Kieswetter says South Africa must take the lesson and do things better. Early this year, the country was added to the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list and is under greater monitoring against money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation. Kieswetter says some of the issues that the country has been grey listed for, could have been avoided.

“If I look at the grey listing actions that we missed the mark on, I think we should have a hard look at ourselves and if we are honest say that some of them were avoidable and the opportunity, we now have is to learn from that and to improve inter agency relationship within South Africa,” Kieswetter explains.

The Commissioner also says there’s room for improvement in collaboration as well as relations between SARS and South African law enforcement agencies.