SARS making progress in combating tax fraudsters – commissioner Edward Kieswetter

South African Revenue Service commissioner Edward Kieswetter has shared an update on fighting tax fraudsters.

Kieswetter says SARS was making steady progress in clamping down on tax fraudsters as he attended the budget speech on Wednesday.

Speaking on the side-lines of the budget speech in Parliament, Kieswetter revealed that R3 billion was recovered from fraudsters to date.

In his national budget speech, Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana revised tax revenue upwards to R1.7 trillion – R94 billion higher than previously projected.

For the first time in 15 years, revenue exceeded non-interest spending and Kieswetter said that SARS was focusing its investigations on both individual taxpayers and syndicates.

EWN reports that it was pursuing 829 cases against individuals, and of those, 178 were handed over for prosecution.

“The good news is that in 94 cases that we have finalised, we’ve had a 97.8% conviction rate. In other words, 92 of those cases have been found guilty and prison sentences have been issued,” he said.

“Progress, I think, is slow but steady… we would rather move through this more thoroughly, so that we can secure successful convictions.”

The commissioner added that there was a proliferation of syndicates working in tax-evasion schemes.

Meanwhile, SARS is currently working on 413 cases, half of which were at a far advanced stage of investigation and BusinessTech Africa understands that the tax authority was also auditing 46 cases linked to state capture.