{"id":494643,"date":"2021-05-31T10:44:05","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T08:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=494643"},"modified":"2021-05-31T10:44:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T08:44:05","slug":"this-is-the-group-of-wealthy-south-africans-being-targeted-by-sars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/494643\/this-is-the-group-of-wealthy-south-africans-being-targeted-by-sars\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the group of wealthy South Africans being targeted by SARS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is targeting wealthy individuals as a means of improving revenue collection and compliance.<\/p>\n

In his February budget speech, finance minister Tito Mboweni announced the establishment of a dedicated unit to improve compliance of individuals with wealth and complex financial arrangements also known as the High Wealth Individual (HWI) unit, which came into effect on 1 April 2021.<\/p>\n

This announcement followed the adoption of a new operating model that provided an opportunity to refine SARS approach to this segments compliance.<\/p>\n

A report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that SARS’ new HWI unit currently has a limited focus on individuals with assets worth more than R75 million. <\/strong><\/p>\n

At present, this HWI tax base consists of 1,406 individuals<\/strong>, with the unit focusing on these South Africans\u00a0the OECD said.<\/p>\n

“The complexity of their tax affairs, together with the opportunities that their wealth may provide for aggressive tax planning and cross-border tax avoidance or evasion pose particular challenges and risks to SARS,” the group said.<\/p>\n

“These unique characteristics justified a different approach to ensure voluntary tax compliance. Given their importance and potential revenue contribution, SARS endeavours to provide a differentiated approach (treatment strategy) to ensure voluntary compliance.”<\/p>\n

We are watching you\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In April, SARS sent letters<\/a><\/strong> to some of these wealthy taxpayers, detailing its plans for the unit and how it will look at improving collections.<\/p>\n

It also informed the taxpayers that the unit will be directly monitoring their tax portfolio and profile. The unit said it will also assign a dedicated relationship manager which will serve as a \u2018central entry point to SARS\u2019 for the taxpayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mandate requires us to collect revenue to enable government to build a capable state that ensures economic and social development for the well-being of all South Africans,\u201d the letter states.<\/p>\n

To this end, SARS said it will focus on nine key objectives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Provide clarity and certainty to taxpayers and traders of their obligations;<\/li>\n
  2. Make it easy for taxpayers and traders to comply with their obligations;<\/li>\n
  3. Detect taxpayers and traders who do not comply, and make non-compliance hard and costly;<\/li>\n
  4. Develop a high performing, diverse, agile, engaged and evolved workforce;<\/li>\n
  5. Expand and increase the use of data, with comprehensive knowledge management, to ensure integrity, derive insight and improve outcomes;<\/li>\n
  6. Modernise our systems to provide digital and streamlined online services;<\/li>\n
  7. Demonstrate effective resource stewardship to deliver quality outcomes and performance excellence;<\/li>\n
  8. Work with and through stakeholders to improve the tax ecosystem;<\/li>\n
  9. Build public trust and confidence in the tax administration system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u201cAligned to these strategic objectives, we have also re-organised ourselves in order to adopted a segmented approach which aims at improving our service to all taxpayers, including yourself.<\/p>\n

    \u201cAs a result SARS has established a segment dedicated to high wealth individuals, who make a significant contribution to the revenue we collect.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \n

    Read: How much money you need to join the wealthiest 0.1% in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is targeting wealthy individuals as a means of improving revenue collection and compliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":80497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26,3246],"class_list":["post-494643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline","tag-sars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494643"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494677,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494643\/revisions\/494677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}