SARS, treasury issue detailed analysis of tax revenue data

- Sanchia Temkin - Business Day

A first of its kind publication by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and the treasury is intended to provide tax practitioners, economists, taxpayers and other stakeholders with an in-depth analysis of tax revenue data

Treasury tax policy chief director Cecil Morden said yesterday that the government wanted to make the information available to as many parties as possible.

Parties would be able to use the data for structured analysis purposes rather than a time series analysis, Morden said. This was because in some instances an overview for all tax periods had not been provided.

The research provides an overview of tax revenues for the financial periods 2002- 03, and 2005- 06 and, in some instances, aggregate revenues for earlier and later periods .

The data is based on tax revenue collections and customs duties with the focus on three main taxes: personal income tax, corporate tax, and VAT.

Beric Croome, a tax executive at corporate law advisers Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, said the initiative was a welcome publication for tax practitioners. There had long been a call for such information.

“It seemed at various stages to have been available to practitioners, such as in the budget review, and then suddenly it was no longer at hand,” Croome said. “The statistics will also give the government a better feel of where the revenue is coming from. It will help the government with their projections and budgeting, particularly in difficult economic times such as these, ” he said.

Morden said the treasury had used the data internally and it helped the government in instances with its budgeting.

Although the figures for registered companies and individuals were likely to be accurate, it was difficult to get an accurate figure for the registration of trusts, Croome said.

The masters of the high courts did not provide SARS with information such as the registration of a trust. Improvement in the quality of data and availability would also enhance the tax policy process, he said.

The number of registered individual taxpayers on the SARS database had increased from 3,4-million in the 2002-03 financial year, to 5,2-million last year.