The Commissioner of the South Africa Revenue Service (SARS), Tom Moyane, yesterday assured the government that the revenue authority would achieve its revenue target for the 2017/18 financial year.
This assurance came barely 24 hours after the Finance Minister, Malusi Gigaba, raised the collectible revenue for the South African fiscus by end of March from R1214.7 billion to R1217.3 billion.
The set target represented a marginal increase of R2.6 billion and stemmed from improved company and trade taxes collected by SARS in Q4, 2017.
Available data on revenue collected by SARS in the 2016/2017 financial year showed that the agency recorded a shortfall of R48.2 billion, revised down from R50.2 billion, and Gigaba raised some taxes to generate an additional R36 billion for the fiscus.
Moyane said the revenue authority was committed to maximising revenue collection for the government’s development agenda, despite the unimpressive economic trend in the country.
He pointed out that need to generate more revenue to buoy government’s funding capacity had become more imperative given the fact that the nation’s fiscal stability was dependent on the SARS’ ability to rake in more revenue into the fiscus.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s sovereign debt levels rose to 53.3percent of GDP recently.
