National Property Portfolio on Auction

National Property Portfolio on Auction
Loading

Sars engages firms as net closes in on tax dodgers

February 28 2013 at 08:00am

Comment on this story

Donwald Pressly

The Sa Revenue Service (Sars) was engaging with companies that had their base of operations in South Africa “but appear to have shifted a large proportion of their profits to lower-tax jurisdictions where only a few people are employed”, Pravin Gordhan said yesterday.

Gordhan said that Sars was also pursuing schemes identified under the revised general anti-avoidance rules following several years of “painstaking work”, tracing transactions through multiple jurisdictions and entities.

He said: “These benefits typically accrue to advisors and pre-existing shareholders, rather than new shareholders who were introduced as the ostensible beneficiaries of the transactions.”

The government is also cracking down on companies that get government contracts, but are not contributing their share to the tax cake.

“Sars is also targeting other areas of non-compliance, including recipients of government expenditure who are not up to date with their taxes.”

By working closely with the Treasury and interfacing with the government payment system, Sars had identified firms which had received payments “but have not declared their full income”, he said.

Gordhan reported that they were being audited “and others will follow”.

The minister added that this intervention would be “further underpinned” by the reform of the tax clearance certificate process announced in October.


sign up
 
 

Comment Guidelines


  1. Please read our comment guidelines.
  2. Login and register, if you haven’ t already.
  3. Write your comment in the block below and click (Post As)
  4. Has a comment offended you? Hover your mouse over the comment and wait until a small triangle appears on the right-hand side. Click triangle () and select "Flag as inappropriate". Our moderators will take action if need be.

     

Join us on

 IOL-Social networks IOL-Social networks IOL-Social networks IOL-Social networks
IOL Travel

Make sure you find the best available airfares with our easy-to-use search engine.

Travel_pic_enw
Sudoku