For the second successive year, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) broke the trillion rand mark by collecting R1.14 trillion in tax for the 2016\/2017 financial year.<\/p>\n
For the financial year, net revenue grew by 7.0% contrasted with a growth in refunds of 9.5% year on year.<\/p>\n
SARS noted that the 2016 calendar year was characterised by subdued growth with global growth easing to 3.1% in 2016, from 3.2% in 2015.<\/p>\n
It said that a number of global trends impacted negatively on South Africa\u2019s economy. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for 2016 was revised down from 0.9% in February 2016, to 0.5% in the February 2017 budget (Recently StatsSA published the official view for real GDP growth in 2016 at 0.3% and nominal growth of 7.1%).<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, SARS said it expects the domestic economy to improve to GDP growth levels of about 1.2% based on emerging trends which include:<\/p>\n
“These green shoots will assist SARS in the revenue collection drive towards the attainment of the printed estimate for the 2017\/18 financial year of R1.266 trillion, a required uplift of 10.5% over the current year,” it said.<\/p>\n
“It should be cautioned that this strong revenue growth outlook for the next financial year was developed when a more rapid economic recovery, than what is currently the case, was anticipated.”<\/p>\n
Tax type analysis The largest contributor was PIT, which accounted for 37.2% of total revenue, followed by net VAT contributing 25.2% and CIT collections 18.1%. Customs and Excise collections contributed 27.0% to collections.<\/p>\n PIT<\/strong> collections of R426 billion were higher against the previous year by R36.7 billion (9.4%) but lower than the estimate by R0.9 billion (-0.2%), mainly due to PAYE (Employees\u2019 tax) payments.<\/p>\n In aggregate SARS paid out R222.4 billion in refunds. A total of R23 billion was paid in PIT refunds, reflecting a 10.7% increase on prior year.<\/p>\n CIT refunds totalled R13 billion, representing about R2.2 billion (20.7%) increase in pay outs compared to prior year.<\/p>\n
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\nPersonal Income Tax (PIT), Corporate Income Tax (CIT) and VAT along with Customs and Excise, in aggregate remained the largest sources of tax revenue and represented about 94.5% of total tax revenue collections.<\/p>\n
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