Sars collects R1.55 trillion in taxes through e-filing

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has collected more than R1.55 trillion in taxes at gross, which comprises a net amount of R1.25 trillion.

Sars collected R38 billion more than the revised estimate. Refunds paid amounted to R300.6 billion, which is R20 billion more than 2019/2020.

But despite the improvement, Sars Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said tax compliance levels are still under strain, with a composite compliance level of 62.61%, compared to the previous year of 65.05%.

The Public Confidence Survey showed the impact and prevalence of corruption and wasteful expenditure were not helpful in enhancing tax morale within society which has a direct impact on compliance levels.

Nevertheless, Kieswetter said the revenue collector “was encouraged by the measured progress in rebuilding Sars.”

The institution is focusing on transforming itself into a “Smart modern Sars” by investing 3% of its budgeted resources on its modernisation programme in order to keep abreast of the fast-changing technology space.

“Our specific compliance interventions to detect and deter non-compliance yielded R172 billion, which shows room to improve compliance levels across all tax types,” said Kieswetter.

“This dovetails with Sars strategic objective of making it costly for those who are willfully non-compliant.”

Another R38.9 billion granted in Covid-19 relief measures and trade to the value of R2.6 trillion had been facilitated in accordance with the tax collector’s mandate.

At least 1.6 million additional taxpayers were added to the SARS tax register which resulted in R4.6 billion being added to the net collections.

“Our strategic objective to make it easy and simple for taxpayers to comply has also yielded impressive results: 86.3% of Sars interactions was done through digital channels such as eFiling and the MobiApp,” said Kieswetter.

At least 83.2% of standard taxpayers (3.4 million taxpayers) received auto-assessments based on third party data available to Sars. All taxpayers needed to do was to click accept or edit.

“The effectiveness of these channels are also indicated by the fact that R1.55 trillion was collected via eFiling,” said Kieswetter.

Customs and excise

At least 132 participants were granted “Preferred Trader” status through the Accredited Economic Operator (AEO) programme.

Frontline interventions for Preferred Traders dropped by 22% in this period and 5.6 million customs declarations were processed. Inspection times were reduced from 109 hours to 44 hours, and customs seizures amounted to R2.7 billion.

Sars enforcement efforts also yielded results in difficult and challenging terrain.

“These efforts recovered R147 million from PPE fraud and there was a conviction rate of 96% rate through collaboration with the NPA,” said Kieswetter.

The newly launched High Wealth Individual Segment has written 1,400 direct letters to wealthy individuals and 275 have already been reviewed.

Equally, Sars has also detected 26,000 unregistered taxpayers who have financial assets with economic activity in excess of R1 million.

“A focus area has been the compliance levels of the various segments, such as employers; SMME’s; large businesses and international and high wealth individuals, said Kieswetter.

“In addition, compliance levels of tax products such as PAYE, CIT has been a concern, and SARS has embarked on focused programmes to address this trend,” he added.

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(Compiled by Narissa Subramoney)