Budget 2024: The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is deploying CCTV and related technologies at licensed tobacco manufacturers, to address the high levels of illicit tobacco.
This was the word of finance minister Enoch Godongwana, delivering the 2024 National Budget Speech at Cape Town’s City Hall, this afternoon.
Godongwana noted that visible progress has been made in rebuilding and modernising SARS.
“The tax authority has expanded the tax register, improved debt collections and reduced fraudulent refunds and trade valuations. This has led to improvements in revenue collection.
“Investigations and prosecutions have resulted in R10 billion in additional assessments from the key players in the illicit gold and tobacco industry, of which over R4 billion from key players in the illicit gold and tobacco industry. These and other efforts have assisted with the improvement in revenue.
“Our bigger challenge, as I have stated earlier, is that our pie is not growing fast enough and this limits our ability to generate sufficient revenues to distribute among our priority areas.”
SARS has not been shy in deploying tech-based solutions to help increase compliance levels and yield gains for fiscus.
The taxman previously revealed that data-driven and automated risk engines that detect non-compliance are yielding results, adding R79 billion to the national fiscus in the 2022/23 financial year.
The tax authority collects over 90% of the revenue required by government to serve the South African population.
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