Wits Business School<\/a>, Kieswetter, said: “We use data to do risk profiling of every taxpayer. We use data and artificial intelligence to select taxpayers for further auditing or investigation, but we also use data and technology to provide a seamless experience for most taxpayers.”<\/p>\n“We believe that the best service is no service. We don\u2019t want to be better at queue management, we want to address the root causes, so we don\u2019t have queues.”<\/p>\n
The commissioner said that SARS also uses data and artificial intelligence to select taxpayers for further auditing or investigation. The tax service said that efforts to increase and expand the use of data to improve the integrity of outcomes and enhance its capability to detect instances of non-compliance are beginning to bear fruit.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing the data from various domestic and international sources, as input into machine learning models, risk profiling and case selection, a number of trends have already been observed with positive outcomes in a number of instances.”<\/p>\n
SARS said examples of domestic third-party sources include banks, retirement funds, medical insurance providers, the properties deeds office and the companies register. Other sources included the national register of motor vehicles, the National Treasury\u2019s Central Supplier Database (CSD), as well as the national population register.<\/p>\n
International data sources include the automatic exchange of information on South Africans with off-shore financial assets from about 100 foreign jurisdictions, as well as several mutual administrative agreements with sister organisations.<\/p>\n
In the prior tax year, SARS pointed to progress from compliance activities, with 33% of its results stemming from the automatic risk profiling of taxpayers using data and machine learning.<\/p>\n
Recruitment<\/strong><\/p>\nIn January, SARS launched a recruitment drive, targeting highly skilled workers to help build a data-driven \u2018smart tax authority\u2019. Citing rapidly evolving technological innovation, SARS said it is preparing for a world where its work is increasingly informed by:<\/p>\n
\n- Data-driven insights;<\/li>\n
- Machine learning;<\/li>\n
- Algorithms;<\/li>\n
- Artificial intelligence;<\/li>\n
- Interconnectivity of people and devices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
“In an era characterised by rapidly evolving technological innovation, SARS is preparing for a world where increasingly our work is informed by data-driven insights, machine learning, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and interconnectivity of people and devices,” it said.<\/p>\n
Kieswetter said that the revenue service also aims to build a pool of so-called grey beards (and female equivalents) not to come back and work for the organisations but rather be part of a resource from which younger, more or less experienced people can draw.<\/p>\n
“We are also introducing new graduates, young people, into the organisation so that we keep the generational mix,” he said, adding that the organisation has established a junior board to institutionalise the voice of people below the age of 35.<\/p>\n
“We need to significantly step up our technology innovation capability, these are few and far between. So some of the skills we need for future orientation are hard,” he said, highlighting data science skills in particular. Kieswetter highlighted the difficulty of hiring as a government department, calling it inefficient and bureaucratic<\/span>.<\/p>\nState capture<\/strong><\/p>\nKieswetter said that the actual damage at the South African Revenue Service from state capture “is significantly deeper than what any commission of inquiry could ever report”.<\/p>\n
He said he didn’t believe that there are any institutions in the country that have been cured completely of state capture. The political dynamic in the country today, the contestation for power \u2013 within a political party or across political parties \u2013 is a very active attempt to keep alive the endowment that people derived from state capture, he said.<\/p>\n
South Africa is still inflicted by the residue of state capture, which has spilled over into this administration. We only have to look at the level of corruption that manifested during the procurement phase of the Covid response, said Kieswetter.<\/p>\n
\nRead: SARS is sending letters to C-level executives in South Africa \u2013 here\u2019s what it says<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) Edward Kieswetter says He said that the tax collecting agency has expanded its use of data to ensure a seamless experience for customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":504549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,3246],"class_list":["post-617511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-headline","tag-sars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617511","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=617511"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617549,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617511\/revisions\/617549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}