TAXPAYER DATABASE INCREASES BY 5.1%

MBABANE - An up-to-date taxpayer registration database is paramount for the effective administration of taxes.

At the end of the financial year 2022/23, the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) saw the taxpayer database increasing by 5.1 per cent from 51 901 to 54 562 when compared to the previous financial year. According to ERS, taxpayer registration is fundamental to other key compliance processes like filing, assessment, payment, collection of debts and general tax enforcement; hence it is also vital to allocate adequate resources to maintain a database of sufficient accuracy to assist with taxpayer interactions. To put things into perspective, total tax revenue collections amounted to E12.037 billion against a target of E12.323 billion which was 2 per cent below target performance. The revenue collections to target shortfall was E0.285 billion, however the collections were E1.250 billion. During the reporting period;
* 1 222 Taxpayer Identity Numbers (TINs) were issued to entities registering for Company Income Tax, reflecting a 7.2 per cent increase in the tax base and exceeding the set target of 6.5 per cent.
* 1 883 Taxpayer Identity Numbers (TINs) were issued to individuals registering for Personal Income Tax (PIT), reflecting a 4.3 per cent increase in the taxbase and exceeding the set target of 1.6 per cent.
* On the other hand, 490 VAT certificates were issued to VAT registered taxpayers, reflecting an increase of 7.0 per cent against a target of 4.8 per cent.

The filing compliance approach that was adopted during the year was to closely monitor all large taxpayers, large medium, State funded entities and selected small taxpayers. These taxpayers were selected and segmented according to their tax contributions from previous years. On-time filing for these segments showed an improvement as they were allocated customer relationship managers (CRMs). On-time filing was 36, 67, 50 and 43 per cent for CIT, PIT, VAT and PAYE, respectively. This was against their respective targets of 61.5, 41.0, 72.3 and 58.5. All tax types were below target except for PIT.

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