eBusiness Weekly
Thousands of big firms operate outside tax regime
Big houses and big cars but no taxes
Africa Moyo
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) has threatened to crack down on tax evaders, businesses and individuals alike.
This comes at a time when Government is desperate to shore up its coffers, which have not done well since adoption of the multiple currency regime in 2009.
Zimra has been surpassing its set targets in the last few years, managing to collect $3,978 billion last year against a $3,4 billion target.
But the tax collector believes there is scope to grow revenue collections if the over 4 000 big businesses, thought to be operating outside the tax bracket, honour their obligations.
In its 2017 annual report, Zimra said compliance levels remained “low”.
“There are many economic players who are operating without registering for tax purposes with the revenue authority.
“In 2018, Zimra will be sharing the databases with the relevant stakeholders, pursuing one of the goals of Zimra to bring in all those who are outside the net and evaders to contribute to the fiscus,” reads part of the report.
The taxman is currently training its staffers to be able to net all tax dodgers to ensure they also pay taxes for the good of the country.
At the same time, Zimra is calling on citizens and business people to “embrace the culture of voluntary tax compliance to enable Government to deliver services and develop infrastructure”.
It is understood that some companies were either not registered for tax or do not pay employee salaries regularly, hence, prejudicing Government of revenue.
Zimra chairperson Mrs Willia Bonyongwe recently suggested that thousands of big firms, dealing with equally big companies and making substantial profits, were operating outside the tax bracket.
The tax collector believes citizens have huge sums of money “somewhere in the country”, given the way “mountains are being cut to construct state-of-the-art houses” and the top-of-the-range vehicles being driven in the country.
Government has been working towards expanding the revenue base and has introduced several pieces of legislation to enforce tax payments.
In 2016, Statutory Instrument 148 of 2016 was gazetted with a view ensuring retail operators and other small businesses were taxed beginning last year.
The SI requires every retailer to have a fiscalised electronic register or a non-fiscalised electronic register together with a fiscal memory device.
Fiscalisation, which started in 2010, is expected to stem tax avoidance.
There have been reports that Zimra is potentially losing an average of $1 billion annually due to tax evasion, corruption and under declaration of taxes by businesses.
As at December last year, 2 792 business partners were registered for fiscalisation.
Since the start of the exercise, a total of 8 397 clients have fiscalised.
Other measures to boost revenue include curbing the smuggling of goods.
Zimbabwe’s borders have generally been slammed for being porous given the high levels of smuggling particularly of fuel, basic commodities and fuel.
Zimra has since introduced advanced border and port of entry security systems to monitor the moveme nt of goods across borders.
Some of the security systems include electronic cargo tracking system, non-intrusive inspection systems like sniffer dogs and joint border patrols with other security agencies.
