There’s no quick fix for South Africa’s hobbled tax agency
The new head of South Africa’s tax agency says rebuilding the organization will be a long haul after management was “dismantled” and it lost public trust.
“In the five months I’ve been there we’ve done a significant amount of work, but it’s not a one-trick pony -- it’s a multi-dimensional, multifaceted piece of work,” South African Revenue Service Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Johannesburg office Thursday.
Kieswetter, who took over as head on May 1, inherited an institution that suffered “massive failure of governance and integrity” after the appointment of former head Tom Moyane in 2014, a commission that probed problems at the body found. SARS had a climate “characterized by fear and intimidation, with compliant managers that felt they were under a command-and-control structure,” and unwittingly or unconsciously carried out work that didn’t serve the organization, the new head said.
Turning around the tax agency is crucial to lift South Africa out of an economic slump. The state institution was one of the more effective during the 2000s, when efficient collection and strong growth led to revenue surpluses and space for the government to offer tax cuts.
REBUILDING TRUST
The National Treasury started reversing those concessions in 2015 as the economic expansion waned and skilled professionals left the organization, hindering its ability to improve collections. Revenue fell R57.4-billion short of the budget estimate in the year that ended March 31, the agency said in April. It will be hard to reach the R1.58 trillion-rand estimate for the current financial year, Kieswetter said.
“How do I rebuild the trust and improve the morale? My answer is one person at a time -- you have to connect with each of the 12 500 people and demonstrate to that individual that you truly care,” Kieswetter said. “Trust isn’t built by making big promises, it’s by doing many small things.”
Kieswetter said he’s met with labor unions and about 90% of the institution’s staff to share his plans for the future.
‘DEEP HOLE’
He also started a revenue-recovery project and is implementing the recommendations of the inquiry into SARS’s management.
It has recovered money paid to Bain & Co., the Boston-based consultancy company that was hired to assist in restructuring SARS in 2015, and is in discussions with Gartner Inc. after the US technology-research firm secured a contract without proper procurement processes being followed, Kieswetter said. The institution has also referred some matters to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation for further inquiries.
“We have reached a point of inflection -- we are in a deep hole, but we are not digging ourselves into the hole, we are climbing,” he said. “There can be no once-off wonders.”
Comments
Press Office
Announcements
What's On
Subscribe to improve your user experience...
Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):
Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):
All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors
including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.
Already a subscriber?
Forgotten your password?
Receive weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine (print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
➕
Recieve daily email newsletters
➕
Access to full search results
➕
Access archive of magazine back copies
➕
Access to Projects in Progress
➕
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA
R4500 (equivalent of R375 a month)
SUBSCRIBEAll benefits from Option 1
➕
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports on various industrial and mining sectors, in PDF format, including on:
Electricity
➕
Water
➕
Energy Transition
➕
Hydrogen
➕
Roads, Rail and Ports
➕
Coal
➕
Gold
➕
Platinum
➕
Battery Metals
➕
etc.
Receive all benefits from Option 1 or Option 2 delivered to numerous people at your company
➕
Multiple User names and Passwords for simultaneous log-ins
➕
Intranet integration access to all in your organisation