SARS is ‘levelling up’
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has just concluded a meeting with global figureheads on tax transparency and the exchange of information, with more emphasis on the tax authority’s drive towards modernisation and personal information acquisition.
According to SARS, coming out of the annual OECD Global Forum on Tax Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes hosted in Spain, the global tax community seeks to take compliance mechanisms to the ‘next level’.
As business models increasingly evolve to be more digital, non-local and virtual, physical borders have become less relevant in the production and movement of goods and services. Consequently, national tax bases are under constant threat of erosion, said the taxman.
“In this regard, it is essential to work with and through stakeholders to improve the tax ecosystem to foster greater collaboration and cooperation. Leveraging the benefits of tax transparency and exchange of information supports the pursuit of developing a Tax and Customs system based on voluntary compliance.”
Edward Kieswetter, the commissioner of SARS, represented South Africa at the initiative and stressed the journey of modernisation SARS is currently on.
“We are progressing on our journey of building a SMART, modern SARS with unquestionable integrity, which is trusted and admired,” he said.
By 2024, SARS aims to have established itself as a modernised, ‘smart’ institution. As a result, the group has set out a road map called Vision 2024.
What is key to this augmentation is leveraging enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to gather more data, said Kieswetter.
“As we are increasing and expanding the use of data…from a valuable source that supplements our vast third-party data repository enabling the detection of taxpayers and traders who do not comply.”
Post the latest global meeting, South Africa is now a signatory to international agreements on the automatic exchange of information offshore.
In its latest interactions with other African counterparts, the taxman now shares information automatically with 78 partners.
SARS continues to make significant inroads in using the data received from international partners to detect possible anomalies in taxpayer assessments. Global repositories have reported from 2021 information on more than 111 million financial accounts worldwide, said Kieswetter.
These moves by SARS of late to tackle non-compliance and place itself amid the global community as a tax authority are all a result of the institution’s strategic objectives.
SARS is currently eyeing the following objectives:
- Provide clarity and certainty for taxpayers and traders regarding their obligation
- Make it easy for taxpayers and traders to comply with their obligations
- Detect taxpayers and traders who do not comply and make non-compliance hard and costly
- Develop a high performing, diverse, agile, engaged and evolved workforce
- increase and expand the use of data
- Modernise our systems to provide digital and streamlined online services
- Demonstrate effective resource stewardship to ensure efficient and quality outcomes
- Work with and through stakeholders to improve the tax ecosystem
- Build public trust and confidence in the tax administration system
Kieswetter claims that during the last three years, the revenue service has made positive strides in its efforts to modernise, assure better voluntary tax compliance, and make it more difficult and expensive for South Africans to escape the taxman – this is expected to continue.
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