Xander Cage
A report by Price Waterhouse Coopers International Limited has revealed that taxpayers in South Africa have lost trust in the South African Revenue Service (SARS), and this year the levels of trust have dropped even lower.
Even though trust levels are going down, a total of 53% of survey participants have agreed to have received quality services from the taxing organization, a good 14% upgrade from last year. PWC spokesperson Elle-Sarah Rossato unpacks this survey report.
“It’s difficult to get into the minds of respondents and we must be clear that we tested corporate income taxpayers, specifically respondents and their finance and tax teams which are confined to a very particular tax base.
“I think what we should just turn to first is that corporate income taxpayers are receiving more verifications across the corporate income tax space as well as VIP space. This could be aligned with why there is a difference in trust overall.
“Our respondents stated that it is difficult to communicate the revenue services and the service delivery is not always what it should be, contact centres are not working which makes it optimally difficult to engage with the service providers on online pplatfors,” she said.
Ms Rossato went on to state, that there has been a significant turnaround in refund time and this is a positive response to the services provided. The revenue services department has been taking on upgrades technologically and training and learning about artificial intelligence to enhance their service provision,
“There has however been a slight increase in turnaround time on tax refunds, our respondents are saying that has increased by around 4% year on year and I think this is a positive sentiment towards SARS. The MTDPS has indicated that SARS has paid out about 212 billion rand in refunds over the first half of this financial year. Although trust is still waning, I think there still needs to be a lot of time spent on increasing efficiencies.
Therefore, one can say that the first point of contact we spoke about in terms of contact centre improvement is that there is a need for radical improvement, also in the compliance audit space. We do know also that SARS is putting a lot of time, energy and money into acquiring education on technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning. “
Ms Rossato said auto assessments have increased for the 2023 tax year to 2.7 million taxpayers and with trust going down in terms of service we can safely say that the Revenue Services board is doing all it can to retain that trust.
Some of the measures taken have also been the drive currently running to recruit, train and retain SARS staff members to better the service provision and gain that trust they are losing. The survey focused mainly on corporate income taxpayers and they noticed a very long delay still on outbound transaction finalizations reading for more complex audits. It takes about 3 to 6 months to be paid out or even 6 to 12 months.
On a positive note, Sars is improving on personal income tax auto assessment, in regards to VAT returns which many companies are desperate for to enhance cash flow. There is also an improvement in the voluntary tax program which is for taxpayers who have picked up defaults in their returns and would like to voluntarily come to SARS to declare them. Mr Kieswetter and his team are definitely doing something right in terms of sending the right messages adding to it that he just recently appointed three new deputy commissioners.
