Load shedding hammers Sars tax receipts

April 3, 2023 Siyabonga Mtangana

South Africa collected R1.686-trillion in taxes for the financial year that ended on 31 March, falling just shy of government’s R1.692-trillion estimate in the 2023 budget, data from the revenue service showed.

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) said on Monday that although mining volumes had decreased in the last year, higher commodity prices contributed significantly to improved tax receipts.

The main sources of revenue collection came from personal income tax at 35.7%, VAT at 25% and company income tax at 20.6%. The finance sector was by far the biggest contributor to tax revenues at 33.9%.

Sars said ongoing power cuts have had a “debilitating” effect on the economy and revenue collection, as it estimated that the outages contribute to potential tax revenue loss of R60-billion/year at a minimum.

Read: How Sars is using machine learning and big data to nail tax offenders

The South African Reserve Bank said last Thursday that it expected the domestic economy to grow by just 0.2% this year, a rate which Sars said will make it difficult to achieve collection targets for the year ahead.