ZRA to exceed annual tax collection target

COMMENT - The ZRA is collecting $3.4 billion in taxes? (K17 trillion : K5000/USD) Time to start an investment fund.

ZRA to exceed annual tax collection target
By Ndinawe Simpelwe
Fri 02 Sep. 2011, 13:40 CAT

ZAMBIA Revenue Authority commissioner general Wisdom Nhekairo says tax collections this year will exceed the annual target of K16 trillion. In an interview, Nhekairo said ZRA would exceed this year's target by K1 trillion because of the tax arrears that the mines have paid, adding that tax collection was on course.

"We will exceed that target by about K1 trillion and the excess of the K1 trillion we are going to make will actually be because of the mining tax arrears that we collected this year.

But otherwise the K16 trillion is on course, maybe in the last half of this year, we might even get a little bit more and go above the K16 trillion," Nhekairo said.

He said the mining tax arrears were all paid by June 30th this year.

"Everybody has paid the arrears as of 30th June, that's the K1 trillion I am talking about. That's the arrears of all of them put together and that's what we collected as mining tax arrears," he said.

Nhekairo also said taxes were contributing about 17 per cent to the country's gross domestic product.

He said ZRA's aim was to ensure that tax contributes about 20 per cent to GDP by 2013 after expanding the tax base.

"The tax base will not always be 100 per cent; there will always be businesses and individuals who are outside and not within the tax base that we can't currently capture. There is more we can do and our strategies are there to ensure that we increase the number of businesses and economic activities in the tax net," Nhekairo said.

"Obviously we could collect more if certain sectors do not have issues of failing to pay their taxes. But this is the normal thing that is going on, right now from our best estimates this is the tax that is collectable.

The possibility of collecting more is always there. No one collects the correct amount at any time because there will be failures of companies, there will be failures of people failing to pay."