Times Of Swaziland: GRADED TAX A FINANCIAL DRAIN

GRADED TAX A FINANCIAL DRAIN
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BY KWANELE DHLADHLA  on 21/03/2019 08:29:00


MBABANE – Does the continued collection of graded tax in the Kingdom of
Eswatini make financial sense?
This question arises from the fact that this tax contributes an insignificant
amount of money to the country’s overall revenue collected by Eswatini Revenue
Authority (SRA).
SRA Commissioner General Dumisani Masilela has advised that it would have been a
wise decision that graded tax be scrapped in the E21.83 billion 2019/20 budget
presented by Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg in Parliament on February 27,
2019.
The basis of Masilela’s assertion to the effect that cancellation of graded
tax collection would be an ideal move was in response to a question posed during
an editors’ breakfast meeting convened at Royal Villas last Friday.
Masilela disclosed that efficient graded tax collection requires more resources
than what it actually contributes to the tax pool. The CG revealed that from
April 2018 to February 2019, they had successfully collected E1 164 969 as
graded taxes. An individual within the working class is obligated to pay E18 in
terms of the Graded Tax Act of 1968.
For the same period (April 2018 to February 2019), the SRA collected E8.259
billion as taxes. Out of this total amount, which has been pumped into the SRA
by taxpayers in different categories, graded tax did not make up for even one
per cent.
In fact, graded tax only contributed 0.014 per cent.
Resources
“Between 80 to 90 per cent of the traffic which visits SRA service centres
countrywide pertains to graded tax. This effectively means more resources get
allocated to graded tax collection instead of focusing on making tax collection
more efficiently across the board,” Masilela explained.