Acting South African Revenue Service (SARS) Commissioner Mark Kingon says they have already started the process of cleaning up the revenue service in an effort to restore public confidence in the entity.

On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa sacked revenue service commissioner Tom Moyane after accepting the recommendation of Judge Robert Nugent, the chairperson of the SARS commission of inquiry.

Nugent recommended that a permanent commissioner of SARS be appointed.

Moyane was suspended in March following controversies in the way he managed SARS.

Kingon says, “We’ve been doing a considerable amount such as the re-establishment of the large business unit that should be in place by the end of this calendar year. The most important thing for me is to restore confidence in the tax system and we are going to work hard to try and do that so people do trust us.”

“I think some trust has broken down. We intend to restore that and move forward and I think that we’re going to see that in the numbers as we get our specific units operating,” he adds.

Corruption Watch has welcomed Ramaphosa’s dismissal of Moyane describing it as a bold and decisive action.

Corruption Watch Executive Director, David Lewis says, “We are delighted, we strongly welcome it. What we hope to come out of it is the opportunity to get SARS back on its feet . It’s a critical institution and it needs strong permanent leadership in place you know. As admiral as the job the acting leadership has done it needs permanent leadership and now is the opportunity to put that in place.”

Meanwhile, the Presidency had defended Ramaphosa’s decision to sack Moyane saying he had to act because the situation had become untenable.

Presidential spokesperson Khusela Diko says Ramaphosa did not wait for Nugent’s final report before sacking Moyane because he did not expect to be it to be that different from the interim one.

Diko says, “When Mr Moyane invited President Ramaphosa in his answering affidavit, to declare whether indeed he was accepting the recommendation of the Nugent Commission, the President took a decision then that he would indeed accept the recommendations and his answering affidavit that goes in today goes to great length to answer all the questions that Mr Moyane raises.”

Additional reporting by Sashin Naidoo.