Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Namibia Revenue Agency (Namra) has started paying provisional taxpayers’ refunds again, but no tax directives for payouts will be issued to some of the provisional taxpayers that have received tax refunds between 2018 and 2022.
Namra said this last week as the agency continues to investigate alleged tax fraud.
In March the agency said about N$15 million was fraudulently claimed and paid out as refunds to some undeserving provisional taxpayers.
Because of this scam now reportedly involving N$36 million, more than 43 000 individual provisional taxpayers have not received any tax refunds until the end of last month.
Commissioner Sam Shivute last week said this group of taxpayers will now be allowed to receive and claim their tax refunds, but an undated moratorium on the issuance of tax directives will be in place while “investigations continue”.
Tax directives are normally applied to tax deductions on pension payouts.
Shivute said the N$36 million scam now stretches over 17 institutions, with some 409 taxpayers said to have received fraudulent tax refunds.
To recover these amounts, the commissioner said instructions have been given to the involved taxpayers, banks, pension funds and employers to start deducting and repaying funds.
The Income Tax Act allows for third-party tax claims.
According to the agency, 6 288 provisional taxpayers were paid provisional tax refunds to the tune of N$950 million in respect of various taxes between March 2018 and February 2022.
Of that amount N$496 million was paid out in income tax refunds to some 4 746 taxpayers who will continue to be under scrutiny with no tax directive issued to them.
The tax refund scam has deep roots, and some employees of the tax agency had a hand in it, the commissioner said.
His plea is that all those who have received tax refunds undeserving step up, repay the funds, and “aid the investigations to expose the true masterminds of this scam”.
TRADE AND TAX
This week, the minister of industrialisation and trade, Lucia Iipumbu, had a meeting with Shivute and senior agency officials to enhance synergy in areas of cooperation, such as trade facilitation, one-stop border posts, and integrated online services that relate to imports and exports to combat the smuggling of prohibited products.
Iipumbu stressed the need for the ministry and Namra to collaborate, ensuring future engagements would streamline systems, processes and procedures to improve service delivery.
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