The Special Tribunal has ordered businessman Hamilton Ndlovu and his companies to pay back at least R158 million in monies gained from unlawful and irregular personal protective equipment (PPE) tenders.
On 24 April 2023, the new enhanced Tax Clearance Status System, was introduced, this being the Approval for International Transfer, or AIT application, as it has been coined. Without much fanfare, SARS’ immediate implementation of this new process may have come as a shock to the market, generating some uncertainty amongst financial professionals. In SARS’ Media Statement of 03 May 2023, the revenue authority provided an update on the implementation of the AIT process, clarifying that it is geared at the rationalisation and speeding up of the approval process.
Long gone are the days where SARS relied solely on taxpayer transparency in the completion of tax returns, including the accurate disclosure of taxable income, write Jashwin Baijoo and Richan Schwellnus.
In the Preliminary revenue results announcement earlier this month, the South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) declared unprecedented revenue collection figures arising from taxpayer audits and investigations over the preceding tax year. In his compliance address, SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter (“Kieswetter”) reported 854 strategic taxpayer audits being conducted during the 2022/2023 tax year which yielded R5.4-billion in additional revenue collection. Notably, targeted investigations yielded a whopping R840-million as a result of 71 luxury vehicle audits, R818-million from 285 employee tax incentive audits and R232-million from 4 lifestyle audits. This uptick in successful audits, is indicative of SARS’ ever increasing compliance drives to tackle under-declaration of income by taxpayers, spurred on by its technological advancements in-house.