Zambia Revenue Authority to cross check accuracy of tax declarations

• begins tax returns reviews for 2015 to 2017

Zambia Revenue Authority has begun undertaking comprehensive compliance reviews to ensure taxpayers declarations are consistent for the last three years.

According to a press statement released on August 21, 2018, ZRA Commissioner General Kingsley Chanda stated that in 2017 the authority ran a tax amnesty on interest and penalties arising from late or non-submission of returns and late or non-payment of tax liabilities on all domestic tax liabilities.

Chanda said that following the expiry of the last time-to-pay agreements under the amnesty on June 30, 2018, the authority has started undertaking comprehensive compliance reviews of all tax returns and customs declarations submitted in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The tax amnesty exercise was intended to give an opportunity to taxpayers to declare all transactions that had not been reported and to resolve their tax indebtedness arising from interest and penalties. The amnesty also offered taxpayers longer time-to-pay agreements until June 30 this year.

Chanda said that the objective of the exercise was to ensure that taxpayers’ declarations on the ZRA database are consistent across all tax types and this is being done by means of cross-matching Domestic Tax data on Tax Online and customs data on ASYCUDA World using a revolutionary approach.

Results so far indicate that many taxpayers continue to be evasive when reporting to customs and to domestic tax on comparable transactions.

Chanda further informed taxpayers whose declarations will be flagged by the data matching system that they will receive a notification requesting them to provide an explanation for the identified variations within 14 days of the notification.

“Should a taxpayer fail to oblige with this request for information and records, ZRA shall proceed to amend the taxpayer’s tax assessments by making adjustments that may be deemed fit in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Income Tax Act, the Value Added Tax Act and the Customs and Excise Act”, he said.

He said that failure to provide the information and records requested may result in incurring of fines or penalties in accordance with the aforementioned legislation’s.

The ZRA encouraged taxpayers to comply voluntarily on their tax obligations and taxpayers who choose to evade taxes would be identified and brought to account, noting that tax compliance is everyone’s responsibility.