CAPE TOWN: South Africa’s National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) have released the 2016 Tax Statistics Bulletin. According to the publication, South Africa’s tax-to-gross domestic product ratio increased from 25.5 percent in 2014/15 to 26.2 percent in 2015/16, slightly below the peak of 26.4 percent achieved in 2007/08.
Net VAT collections (including payments, refunds, and import VAT) grew by 7.6 percent in 2015/16, compared with the previous fiscal year. At 26.5 percent of total tax revenue, net VAT was the second-largest contributor to total government revenue, reaching ZAR281.1bn, after individual income tax. Corporate tax, accounting for 18.1 percent of revenues, was the third largest contributor to total government revenue for 2015/16, totaling ZAR193.4bn. As at March 2016, there were almost 19.1m registered individual taxpayers, up from 18.2m in the previous year.
4.7m individuals that were assessed in the 2015 tax year paid personal income tax (PIT). PIT was the largest source of tax revenue in 2015/16, at 33.8 percent of the total and reaching ZAR389.3bn (USD27.6bn). In addition, nearly 3.3m companies were registered for corporate tax, of which about 900 000 submitted tax returns. There were 707,000 registered value added tax (VAT) vendors, of which 425,200 (60.2 percent) were active.
