Lynda Loxton
FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel this week sent a strong signal to errant taxpayers that the time had come for them to pay up – or else.
So confident was he that he announced a package of “relief” measures aimed at luring more taxpayers into the tax net even though the state stood to forfeit more than R2- billion in its new tax “amnesty”.
This will be the money in arrears and interest payments that Manuel said he was willing to write off in return for greater tax morality among South Africans.
The reason for his confidence emerged in the parliamentary public accounts committee this week, when he briefed members of Parliament about progress in restructuring and strengthening the revenue services in the new South African Revenue Services (SARS).
“The situation is improving and it is improving rapidly. It would help if we stopped crying wolf,” he said.
Over the past 12 months, the SARS had been formed, unifying inland revenue and customs and excise, and top staff had been appointed.
Particular attention had been paid to retraining the 11 000 staff and outsourcing information technology systems to allow the computerisation of pay-as-you-earn deductions.
This revitalisation of the organisation was as important as any legislation planned and “we must not pin our hopes on one piece of legislation”, Manuel said.
He had been pressed to specify whether he was confident that the legislation “would provide the SARS with the necessary administrative autonomy to become a performance-driven entity”.
Manuel said that he was “still in the throes of negotiation and we are fairly optimistic about the outcome.
“We have a few feathers in our collective cap on the negotiations already, but I would not like to say more at this stage.”
Progress to date included the fact that the number of assessments issued had risen to 581 000 by September this year compared with 264 000 last year, or a 120% improvement.
The number of value-added tax cases audited had risen to 11 000 by September this year, bringing in an extra R210-million against 7 386 in September last year, which had brought in R100-million.
As a result, revenue collection for 1996/97 was “perfectly on track” to achieve the targeted reduction in the Budget deficit to 5,1%, while R900-million in tax arrears had been collected.
“There are improvements and I think this is an important point because one reads in newspapers about the rot [setting in about poor tax collection].”
He said the SARS would be funded by receiving a certain percentage of revenue collected and this would be used to help provide incentive schemes to staff “in the new fiscal year”.
As soon as it had finalised its business plan, the SARS would receive the extra R150- million allocated to revenue collection in the current financial year.
He was concerned that there had been a high turnover of staff but said he hoped that training programmes and “greater flexibility on remuneration scales” would deal with this next year.
Attention was also being paid to improving the working environment of staff members as this affected morale.
British customs officials were still helping South African officials plug various loopholes in the collection of customs duties, he said, adding that tax officials from several other countries were also expected to provide assistance soon.
Manuel stressed that improving tax collection was but one part of the overall macro- economic thrust to reduce the Budget deficit and set the stage for the kind of job- creating growth South Africa desperately needed.
He said that, half-way through the current financial year, he was still confident that the government would be able to meet its target of reducing the deficit to 5,1%.