ZRA exceeds 2017 operational target

ZRA Commissioner General Kingsley Chanda

The Zambia Revenue Authority has exceeded its 2017 operational target for the first five months by K480 million, representing 3.3 % above target.

In the 2017 national budget, Parliament approved a revenue target of K37.622 billion subject to the legislation of specific tax measures among which was the tax on copper concentrates and border crossing fees.

However, Parliament did not legislate some of the proposed tax measures resulting in a revision of the 2017 operational target for ZRA to K36.774 billion.

In a statement made available to Q-News, ZRA Senior Corporate Communications Officer Oliver Nzala says the Authority is very confident of meeting its revenue collection target by the end of the year owing to measures and initiatives it has implemented such as collecting Value Added Tax (VAT) at source of which K1.454 billion has been collected from 1^st January, 2017 to 31^st May, 2017.

Mr Nzala says the Authority will also introduce fiscalization in order to have an improved level of domestic VAT collections through monitoring of sales at the point of sale.

He adds that ZRA will soon conduct forensic audits on large mining companies in order to appreciate their various complex financial processes they go through when generating incomes that are used for tax purposes and that this will be done by an independent auditor.

Mr Nzala further states that apart from the decentralization of anti-smuggling operations, the Authority has also recruited 45 tax inspectors in order to enhance revenue compliance and enforcement especially in the retail sector.