skeptic_SA
Executive Member
Officials from the SA Revenue Service (Sars) say they met President Jacob Zuma four times on different aspects of tax compliance involving his family.
The first was when his son, Edward, was in the taxman’s cross hairs in relation to his tobacco business. Illicit cigarette sales cost the country billions every year and two of Zuma Junior’s companies had been implicated in long-running investigations.
The second time was when Sars officials saw a risk in various businesses and trusts in which the president’s wives were involved.
A third time related to the president’s alleged meeting with Cape gangsters arranged by former ANC strongman Marius Fransman. On the agenda had been the gangsters’ various pains with Sars.
The fourth and final time was when former deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay met the president at the Union Buildings to talk about the tax implications of the renovation costs at Nkandla.
Sars has never been the president’s favourite institution after it summonsed him to court in 2007 for his failure to submit a tax return, although in a speech to the Sars Amakgwezi Awards ceremony in Johannesburg he recognised its role in securing development.
In 2014, Sars had opened a file to begin investigating whether the president owed fringe-benefits tax for the improvements to his estate. Three years later, that investigation lies dormant with Sars’ independence now teetering.
Sars commissioner Tom Moyane was not on the list of 104 candidates who had applied to be Sars commissioner when Oupa Magashule quit after a recording of him offering a young woman a job was made public. Instead, Moyane was handpicked by the president for the job. The two men’s relationship stretches back to struggle times when both were in exile in Swaziland.
Moyane appears to have started at Sars in 2014 with a clear brief of change for an institution that landed on the wrong side of power once too often.
Source: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/how-the-taxman-was-broken-20170409-2
The first was when his son, Edward, was in the taxman’s cross hairs in relation to his tobacco business. Illicit cigarette sales cost the country billions every year and two of Zuma Junior’s companies had been implicated in long-running investigations.
The second time was when Sars officials saw a risk in various businesses and trusts in which the president’s wives were involved.
A third time related to the president’s alleged meeting with Cape gangsters arranged by former ANC strongman Marius Fransman. On the agenda had been the gangsters’ various pains with Sars.
The fourth and final time was when former deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay met the president at the Union Buildings to talk about the tax implications of the renovation costs at Nkandla.
Sars has never been the president’s favourite institution after it summonsed him to court in 2007 for his failure to submit a tax return, although in a speech to the Sars Amakgwezi Awards ceremony in Johannesburg he recognised its role in securing development.
In 2014, Sars had opened a file to begin investigating whether the president owed fringe-benefits tax for the improvements to his estate. Three years later, that investigation lies dormant with Sars’ independence now teetering.
Sars commissioner Tom Moyane was not on the list of 104 candidates who had applied to be Sars commissioner when Oupa Magashule quit after a recording of him offering a young woman a job was made public. Instead, Moyane was handpicked by the president for the job. The two men’s relationship stretches back to struggle times when both were in exile in Swaziland.
Moyane appears to have started at Sars in 2014 with a clear brief of change for an institution that landed on the wrong side of power once too often.
Source: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/how-the-taxman-was-broken-20170409-2