Zuma approves inquiry at Sars
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has signed off on a judicial commission of inquiry into the embattled SA Revenue Service (Sars) following sustained credibility concerns.
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba, who made the announcement during a meeting with the new board of the beleaguered SAA yesterday, said the inquiry would probe the weakening tax morality and other institutional challenges facing Sars.
Gigaba said Sars commissioner Tom Moyane had been informed about the inquiry and has pledged to support steps that would follow. “He is willing to co-operate,” said Gigaba.
Gigaba said the inquiry would be established soon and further details on the terms of reference, deadline and the chairperson would be announced in due course.
He said the inquiry would look at measures to strengthen Sars and address the worrying under-collection of muchneeded tax revenue.
“Weakening tax morality is a cause for concern for me… (I want to) try to get to the bottom of this through this inquiry,” Gigaba added.
He stressed that the revenue under-collection impacted on the country’s credit ratings and growth prospects.
Last month, Gigaba said during his maiden MediumTerm Budget policy statement that the Treasury expected a revenue shortfall of R50.8 billion in the current fiscal year and warned it would increase to R69.3bn in 2018/2019 and R89.4bn in 2019/2020
Revelations Yesterday, he refused to say whether the inquiry was necessitated by the shocking revelations contained in investigative journalist and author Jacques Pauw’s bestseller, The President’s Keepers – those keeping Zuma in power and out of prison.
In the book, Pauw exposes, among others, an alleged plot by Zuma to quash his massive R63 million tax bill, and his repeated failure to submit his tax returns during at least the first five years of his presidency.
Gigaba said it was important that they continually strengthen tax morality and deal with any underlying causes that could undermine it.
In the past few weeks, Gigaba has said there was a need for fiscal prudence and that South Africa could not afford the nuclear-build programme.
He also said SAA was in the process of repatriating R1bn from its bank account in Angola. Flanked by new SAA chairperson, Johannes Magwaza, Gigaba said the cashstrapped national carrier was not out of the woods yet.
“All the steps we have taken was to affirm the government’s faith in the airline. We still owe lenders a lot of money… Too many things have happened at the airline, which threatened the future of the airline and your (staff) jobs, which didn’t make any of us proud,” he said.
“There is still a difficult road ahead, we still have to raise money, we still have to get strategic equity partners, we still have to find money to refleet the airline.”