SARS Commissioner Keith Kieswetter addressed the media regarding the SARS Revenue collection results of 2022/23

Kieswetter has addressed the media on the SARS Revenue collection results of 2022/23 under the theme ‘Building a solid foundation for sustainable revenue growth’

Kieswetter provided an oversight of how they approach tax revenue management, stating their three mandate objectives, which are Revenue Collected, Trade facilitation, and Compliance improvement.

According to the Commissioner, the public confidence in SARS is improving. From the survey that was conducted, they measured an increase from 71.8% in 2021/22 to 76.5% in 2022/23. The main contributing themes to the increased score were Operational Efficiency, Tax Morality, Tax Diligence, Accessibility and Trustworthiness. Interestingly, public confidence measured only 48% in 2019.

Both of these actions indicate well for an environment of greater compliance and for our strategic goal of voluntary compliance.

The commissioner mentioned that SARS employs powerful data science and artificial intelligence to identify risks, and only in the reporting year alone, they stopped R76.3 billion in fraudulent refund disbursements from approximately 2 million cases of verification.

“The important work we perform is the intersection of the economic performance, which SARS can do very little to influence.

However, the effectiveness and efficiency work of our tax administration and our compliance work underscores our Strategic

Intent of Voluntary Compliance. Through all of this, we do every task correctly and consistently to produce these results” said the SARS Commissioner Keith Kieswetter

 

Done by: Alungile Njemla