Tawanda Karombo Victoria Falls
MOST African revenue authorities, including the SA Revenue Service (Sars), were making progress with digitising their systems, but generating maximum revenue from mobile money and telecoms was still problematic, experts said last week.
However, there are other regional countries, such as Zimbabwe, whose revenue collections are lagging behind as they have not yet embraced mobile technology in enhancing revenue collections.
Analytical systems
“The challenge for tax authorities is to validate the accuracy of returns and monitoring of the taxes generated from mobile transactions and telecoms transactions. Tax authorities require data analytical systems for interrogating data from the telecoms systems,” officials attending an information and communications technology (ICT) conference for the African Tax Authorities Forum underway in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, said.
Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania had already embraced tax filing and payments through mobile devices, using platforms such as SMS and unstructured supplementary service data, officials added.
Soobhash Sonah, the director of information systems at the Mauritius Revenue Authority, said “accessibility to mobile devices” for taxpayers when undertaking payments and filing returns was “a given in Tanzania”. He added that there had been a massive take-up of telecoms services through mobile devices, although usage of text messages was declining.
A representative for Sars told delegates that the South African revenue authority was keeping up with trends to use mobile and digital platforms in allowing filing for tax returns.
Kenya is another country that is keeping pace with such developments and trends.
Although increased uptake of telecoms services had been a boon for revenue authorities across Africa to collect more revenue, experts attending the Victoria Falls conference said the rapid developments and advancements in the industry were outpacing the reaction by revenue authorities.
“The pace is frightening. It’s an incredible challenge for tax authorities to tax the industry,” said one expert, who was helping revenue authorities across the region to get more returns out of the mobile money and telecoms industry.
He said: “You need to know what is happening at a base station in terms of minutes of usage and how much data is being processed and sent out. This calls for greater capacity in handling data and verification of data provided by operators.”
In Zimbabwe, the government has introduced taxation on airtime top-ups and on cellphone handset imports.
The country has also introduced a 5 US cents (R0.59) levy on mobile money transactions, although there are worries that telecoms companies could be manipulating the platforms’ usage data.
Integrate
Businesses and government arms are being urged to integrate their systems and platforms to allow for the usage of technological platforms.
Although Africa’s internet penetration rate was still low, the working populace had embraced it as they spent most of their time on social networking sites and instant messaging platforms, another expert said.
“In light of the decline usage of text messages, it is imperative for revenue authorities, government departments and businesses to increasingly utilise linkages with mobile and internet devices, because most of the working populace is highly connected and active on the internet and they would rather comfortably transact tax payments and filing using such easy-to-access platforms.”