By Professor Matthew Lester
It hasn’t been an easy year on the lecture circuit. Taxpayers are worried about the various rumblings at SARS and this was not helped by the personal tax increase announced in the National Budget Speech (the first since 1995.)
This is not helped by the press inflaming various issues in an attempt to paint the image that SARS is about to collapse due to a handful of resignations. Some pundits are even predicting a taxpayer revolt.
So I have been very anxious in the buildup to the 12 noon 1 April announcement of the final tax collection numbers for the 2015 fiscal year. If they turned out even worse than the gloomy picture painted in the National Budget Speech, well, I am sure the international rating agencies would have climbed into RSA again.
But the tax collections for the year are very close to being on track.
SARS was estimating a final collection of R979 billion on budget day. That would be close to R15 billion below the original budget and R5 billion short of the revised position announced in the MTBF speech in October 2014.
The final number came in at R986 billion, some R8 billion below the original 2015 budget. That’s less than 1% off target.
There is no denying that SARS has been going through a difficult patch. There was the appointment of Magushula to Commissioner after Pravin Gordhan’s promotion to minister of finance in 2009. That didn’t work. And then SARS sat with an acting commissioner for more than a year thereafter. But SARS has held together. I think that says something about the other 15 000 SARS employees. Well done!
SARS is in good working order. No doubt Judge Kroon will soon get to the bottom of the governance issues in a manner that will assure all of us that at least RSA’s tax collection function is of world class standard.
