The South African Revenue Service (Sars) says it uncovers non-compliance and fraud through data-driven risk detection. According to the tax-collection agency, one of its strategic objectives is to work hard in expanding the use of data to improve the integrity of outcomes and enhance its capability to detect instances of non-compliance.
The organisation pointed to their government procurement of personal protective equipment analysis, which revealed that large numbers of vendors who supply services to the government are not tax compliant as progress of this strategy.
“We identified approximately 1900 entities, each earning more than R1-million (between March 2020 – May 2021), from contracts with government, totalling R6.3 billion, yet are not registered as VAT vendors; a further 2380 VAT registered vendors have filed nil returns, despite having earned collectively over R9 billion from government contracts.”
Through data from whistle-blower reports and third-party sources, Sars deployed over 90 employees to execute one of their largest search and seizure operations. This operation identified 11 entities at four different sites and 27 taxpayers for potential fraudulent disclosures in respect of several years.
“The results from our Criminal Investigations efforts have yielded in excess of 70 convictions this year alone,” said Sars.
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