South African Revenue Services Commissioner Tom Moyane has denied that Sars is withholding tax refunds to boost tax collection figures.
He says while they are addressing issues related to a delay in refunding certain taxpayers, Sars does not deliberately withhold refunds.
He was responding to a finding by the Tax Ombudsman that its systems allow Sars to unduly delay the payment of verified refunds to taxpayers in certain cases.
He was briefing Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance on Sars’s annual financial report.
“There is no way that we have ever, in my tenure of office, that we’d like to withhold refunds in order to make up, because at the end of the period, somebody will find out that you are pumping your numbers. I don’t want to leave this organisation with a stigma that says you pumped (up) numbers to achieve a number that is golden.”
