ZIMRA Executing its National Mandate

Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) executes a critical national mandate of collecting taxes from all responsible organizations and citizens. It derives its mandate from the Revenue Authority Act [Chapter 23:11], passed by the parliament in 2002. This Act specifies that ZIMRA is responsible for assessing, collecting and accounting for revenue through the Ministry of Finance.

The revenues and taxes administered by ZIMRA include Customs Duty – levied on imported goods in terms the Customs and Excise Act [Chapter 23:02], Pay As You Earn (PAYE), value added tax (VAT), withholding taxes, excise duty, Road Tolls, corporate taxes, Presumptive Taxes, Surtax, presumptive tax, and special excise duty.

ZIMRA is expected to advise Government on fiscal and economic matters as well as revenue forecasting and participation in national budgetary process. It is also involved in some essential services such as curbing smuggling and any forms of international trade crime.

It also has the obligation to enforce import, export and exchange controls with the prime objective of protecting the consumer against dangerous and harmful drugs, hazardous substances, expired drugs, pornographic, objectionable or undesirable materials, and harmful substances.

Paying taxes in a timely manner is one of the important responsibilities of all citizens in order to contribute towards nation building and funding of public services.

In view of the foregoing, it is a prerogative responsibility of all citizens to respect the dictates of paying all due taxes to ZIMRA. Each corporate entity is under legal obligation to pay corporate taxes timely as well as remitting PAYE from its workforce. Any attempt to defy such national prescription is synonymous with irresponsible citizen behaviour.

All organisations are fully aware that they are required by law to pay various taxes to government. It is a folly to note that some organisations are contemptuous to the extent of taking the tax collector to court. To start with, each organisation is expected to meet the requirement of honouring its dues to government before punitive measures are taken against them. But surprisingly, some companies chose never to make their payments in time. They relaxed till such a time that its indebtedness to ZIMRA reached some unprecedented levels.

When ZIMRA applied the appropriate measures to recover government funds they are crying foul. Surely, if they were loyal to the provisions of the law operating within its bounds they should have been in harmony with the tax collector now.

Allegations against ZIMRA that its actions would compromise the health of industry in the country are baseless. If they were responsible enough they should have averted this current predicament a way before these corrective measures against their recalcitrance were taken.

ZIMRA is playing a noble job of raking-in cash on behalf of government to keep the rest of the nation going. Therefore companies should not wait till the final minute watching without redressing their obligations.

However, ZIMRA is also urged to deal with such matters meticulously. The entities owing it funds should be consulted and come up with a payment plan which enables them to pay their dues without up-setting their operations.

Companies should bear in mind that, despite seeking intervention of the courts, that does not take away their obligation to pay taxes to government. They need to employ ways of managing their issues as a matter of habit. The key to their problems in this respect is to clear their arrears at their earliest convenience to restore their business sanity. The blame game which they are playing will never work in their favour whatsoever.

I think I also need to remind my fellow citizens that its not only ZIMRA which is trying to recover funds from public debtors, but many other public utilities. ZESA installed pre-paid meters to clients who owed it a lot of cash in unpaid bills. And in their case, they devised a means of recovering that money by making sure that each time their client purchases an electricity juice card they deduct 20% of the total value which is channelled towards servicing the pre-existing debt. All ZESA clients have accepted that deal with easy and now enjoying their services without noise such as that made by grudging companies which are reluctant to meet their legal obligation.

Similar models have been used by NSSA, TelOne and Netone among other. Therefore, debt recovery from non-compliant clients is not only peculiar to ZIMRA.

ZIMRA deserves some blame, however, for its weak monitoring of its clients. They should not fold their hands till when defiance has reached high levels. They should monitor closely all their clients and take corrective measures in time.

In the face of the dwindling revenue sources, ZIMRA is also urged to explore other non-traditional sources such as demanding taxes from landlords/landladies who are cashing-in from their tenants monthly.

Some economists estimate that an average of $7 billion dollars is in circulation o the informal market. This is a significant amount of money which should also contribute to the fiscus. Hence, suitable measures should be devised to enable the informal sector to contribute taxes to the government as well. Every citizen has a natural obligation of propping up the interests of the nation state through funding its operations by any means possible.

Let us all rally behind Geshem Pasi and work closely with ZIMRA in assisting them to meet their national mandate.