Govt identifies suppliers of fiscalisation machines

THE Government has identified nine suppliers of fiscalisation machines as it moves to improve tax revenue collection.

Zimra head of corporate communications Mr Canisio Mudzimu said nine suppliers including the tax collector were selected to supply fiscal devices to Value Added Tax (VAT) payers.

Early this year the Government in consultation with Zimra was forced to replace all suppliers of fiscalisation machines following price disparities.

"The process to approve suppliers of fiscal devices is done by a technical committee chaired by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

The committee comprises various stakeholders, who include economic associations and chambers, relevant Government departments, and Zimra.

"To date, a total of nine suppliers, including Zimra, have been appointed to supply fiscal devices to VAT registered clients who are required to use fiscal devices in terms of the Value Added Tax (Fiscalised Recording of Taxable Transactions) Regulations 104 of 2010," said Mr Mudzimu.

The Govern­ment in­tro­duced the elec­tronic fis­calised cash reg­is­ters and fis­cal mem­ory de­vices with the ob­jec­tive to plug leak­ages in VAT pay­ment.

Fiscalisation is a computerised systemisation of cash register devices to enable them to record in, real-time, sales and other tax information for use by the tax authorities in VAT administration.

Since the in­tro­duc­tion of the fis­cal­i­sa­tion, Zimra has been work­ing on progress to im­prove the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sys­tem by busi­nesses. The sys­tem also en­tailed that busi­nesses in VAT cat­e­gories A, B and D should have fis­calised their op­er­a­tions by December last year.

Cat­e­gories A and B are those reg­is­tered op­er­a­tors who are sub­mit­ting re­turns af­ter ev­ery two months while cat­e­gory D clients sub­mit re­turns on a sea­sonal ba­sis, or as agreed with the com­mis­sioner-gen­eral. Com­pa­nies that fall in cat­e­gory C are those with an an­nual turnover of $240 000.

"Zimra has procured fiscal devices in sufficient quantities to give additional impetus to the fiscalisation programme. The fiscal devices are already available for sale country wide at Zimra offices," said Mr Mudzimu.

Zimra is selling electronic cash registers for $350 and the electronic fiscal printers for $500.

"To date, a total of 6 755 VAT registered operators have acquired and installed fiscal devices," said Mr Mudzimu.

The fiscalisation project was introduced seven years ago when the Government made fiscalisation legally enforceable by gazetting Statutory Instrument (SI) 104 of 2010. According to the statutory instrument, all eligible registered operators are required to commence recording of transactions using fiscalised devices. Failure to comply with the requirement to use fiscalised electronic devices for the recording of all business transactions is an offence and renders the operator liable to a fine or imprisonment.