DA welcomes the Tax Ombud investigation into refund delays by SARS
22 March 2017
The Democratic Alliance welcomes the announcement by the Tax Ombud, Judge Bernard Ngoepe, that he will conduct an investigation into systemic failures at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) that result in the reported delays in tax refunds.
These delays are across the board and include VAT, Income Tax, Employee Tax Incentives and Diesel refunds which are causing considerable financial distress to businesses, especially small businesses.
Tom Moyane, the SARS Commissioner, has repeatedly claimed, in responses to questions from the DA, that there are no problems with the various types of tax refunds and that SARS is in fact performing exceptionally well in paying refunds promptly.
This has been contradicted by the exceptionally high number of calls to the DA and to professional accounting bodies for assistance from taxpayers who state that SARS have not paid the refunds to promptly.