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Zimra to garnish parastatals' accounts
09 Apr 2014 at 06:14hrs | Views
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority will soon start garnishing bank accounts of State-linked enterprises whose top management are manipulating records and using political influence to avoid paying taxes.
This was said by Zimra Commissioner-General Mr Gershem Pasi yesterday when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Chipinge South representative Cde Enock Porusingazi (Zanu-PF).
Mr Pasi said zimra's audits of parastatals discovered that records were being doctored to hide information from the tax collector.
He, however, would not reveal the organisations involved because the information is confidential.
Mr Pasi said he knew some people were claiming zimra was sleeping on the job.
"Contrary to that some of them (State-linked enterprises) have been under audit for quite a while, but what has been happening is boards and minutes are actually made in such a way so as to hide things from zimra.
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"Really, unless we get inside information, we are unable to see that things were being done underhand. So in those cases where we have information, we have been seizing documents.
"We have teams which would go there (to companies) because we would have insights of where those documents are, we go and we seize them and we raise (tax) assessments," he said.
Mr Pasi said some executives would then use political influence to try and dodge the taxes owed by the entities they managed.
"And when we raise those assessments sometimes the CEOs don't want to come to the table they then run to this minister or to that minister, so when they do that we garnish the accounts until they come to the table and then we have (payment) terms which are acceptable.
"Some things will be deliberately camouflaged so that zimra is not in the know so that's why I said there would be more of such instances coming. As long as people don't want to co-operate we issue garnishee orders and when they come, we co-operate and we talk and we move together," he said.
This was said by Zimra Commissioner-General Mr Gershem Pasi yesterday when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Chipinge South representative Cde Enock Porusingazi (Zanu-PF).
Mr Pasi said zimra's audits of parastatals discovered that records were being doctored to hide information from the tax collector.
He, however, would not reveal the organisations involved because the information is confidential.
Mr Pasi said he knew some people were claiming zimra was sleeping on the job.
Play the video below
"Really, unless we get inside information, we are unable to see that things were being done underhand. So in those cases where we have information, we have been seizing documents.
"We have teams which would go there (to companies) because we would have insights of where those documents are, we go and we seize them and we raise (tax) assessments," he said.
Mr Pasi said some executives would then use political influence to try and dodge the taxes owed by the entities they managed.
"And when we raise those assessments sometimes the CEOs don't want to come to the table they then run to this minister or to that minister, so when they do that we garnish the accounts until they come to the table and then we have (payment) terms which are acceptable.
"Some things will be deliberately camouflaged so that zimra is not in the know so that's why I said there would be more of such instances coming. As long as people don't want to co-operate we issue garnishee orders and when they come, we co-operate and we talk and we move together," he said.
Source - The Herald
