A special post-vehicle clearance audit last year into
vehicle imports, unearthed 485 irregular import documents with a potential
revenue inflow prejudice to Treasury valued at US$70 million, the Zimbabwe
Revenue Authority (Zimra) revealed.
Most of the vehicles, Zimra said, were luxury cars against
which investigations have been instituted along with efforts to recover the
outstanding amounts due to the authority.
The audit was done as part of wide-ranging measures
implemented by the tax authority to plug all revenue leakages and maximise
collections, Zimra Commissioner-General Faith Mazani said at the authority’s
annual general meeting (AGM) last week.
As part of the revenue-enhancing measures and collections
through post-importation audits, Zimra implored all importers of specified
motor vehicles to verify whether their vehicles were properly cleared and
if duty was paid. Last year, Zimra said
it was owed $5 billion in unpaid taxes,
including from undeclared or under declared high value luxury vehicle duties.
Comm-Gen Mazani said Zimra’s focus was now on strengthening
partnerships with law enforcement agents to combat corruption, border
surveillance, curb smuggling and use of modern audit techniques to detect
revenue declaration anomalies.
Working with the Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Commission
(Zacc), Comm-Gen Mazani said a total of 601 cases were investigated last year
with US$163.78 million identified for recovery, which is ongoing.
She said the revenue authority was aggressively using the
Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act to seize and attach all property
acquired through fraudulent means, culminating in the an historic asset
forfeiture earlier this year.
The ongoing efforts to reduce revenue leakages also saw
Zimra increase the number of cargo trucks being sealed, which grew by 27
percent to 39 601 in 2019 with a total of 27 of the country’s major routes from
various ports of entry being under electronic cargo tracking (ECTS).
This has resulted in the number of geo-fencing violations
coming down by 44 percent while number of geo-fencing violation penalties
similarly dropped by 44 percent to 210 000.
As such, Zimra said net revenue collections for 2019 came
in at $23.19 billion, way ahead of the annual target of $18.6 billion, which
was 24.6 percent above target.
The top six tax revenue heads last year were excise duty
(17.76 percent), individuals (14.8 percent),
companies (13.75 percent), Value Added Tax from local sales (13,18 percent), inter-mediated money
transfer tax (IMTT) (11.4 percent).
Comm-Gen Mazani said the authority’s operations were
carried against a range of dynamics, including high inflation, which closed the
year at 521 percent, shortage of foreign currency, liberalisation of foreign
exchange market, shortage of fuel, illegal use of US dollars, drought and the
negative impact of Cyclone Idai.
Focus is now on implementing a new US $10 million tax and
revenue management system (TaRMS), which is funded by the African Development
Bank. Herald
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