TAX EVADER?
SARS slaps ANC with R102m tax bill – sheriff instructed to attach property
The ANC employs 346 staff members at Luthuli House, and it has not paid over employee tax, UIF or the skills development levy, although it deducted these from staff.
SARS has slapped the ANC with a R102-million bill for unpaid taxes that it had to go to the high court to get paid. In December, the Gauteng High Court issued a civil judgment instructing the sheriff to attach assets to the value of R102,546,580.76 in 10 days.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for whether it had done so or not. The ANC has confirmed the judgment against it for tax arrears to Daily Maverick. It has made payment arrangements and started paying.
On 25 March, the Weekly SA Mirror, an independent newspaper, reported the judgment.
The ANC employs 346 staff members at its Luthuli House headquarters, and it has not paid over employee tax, UIF or the skills development levy, although it deducted these from staff. In 2021, staff repeatedly protested at Luthuli House, and the party kept promising to pay but did not. The trade union Nehawu, which organises ANC staff members, revealed that UIF and provident fund deductions had been made but not paid over.
The SARS judgment has clarified that the party did not pay over personal income taxes or the skills development levy. The low staff numbers and the high tax bills suggest the ANC has not paid taxes due for years.
The ANC has been hit hard by implementing the Political Party Funding Act, which makes it mandatory for donors to disclose any donation of more than R100,000.00. Now treasurer-general Paul Mashatile has said the party will table amendments to lift the donation cap from R15-million annually to R100-million, BusinessLive reported in February.
The ANC, a tax evader? Massive debt, unpaid salaries, dry donation taps
“We are frustrated at how certain entities – generally politically connected, including to the ANC – have been able to get away with non-payment to SARS. We saw this at SA Express, the Post Office, ANC and more. Imagine if a private airline or PostNet (a competitor to the Post Office) or the DA did not pay their taxes? All hell would be let loose and rightly so as the law is the law. In short, we believe SARS should not hesitate to go out against all perpetrators and hold their respective accounting officers to account with fines, jail time and more,” said Wayne Duvenage of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA)
SARS does not comment on individual tax affairs. Daily Maverick’s Marianne Merten reported how aggressively SARS goes after taxpayers. Daily Maverick readers have said that compliance levels imposed by SARS have become draconian. Most of the reports were from individual taxpayers and small business owners. DM
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Bring the broom and lift the end of the carpet…
What a disgrace!! And these are the gross incompetents running this country. No wonder we are on the road to a failed state!! Instead of going what is right, they now want to change the rules. Typical fickle anc.
It’s not the Political Party Funding Act. The master corruption enabler was forced out in 2018 and now all his gangster buddies no longer want to donate to a Ramaphosa-led ANC. Let’s not forgot the non-compliance began under Zuma ANC’s.
Oh no! The non-compliance has been part of the anc’s DNA for many decades.
How did SARS not chase recovery before the debt became this large ?
When big business & politicians cohabite the bears outcomes that highlights the worse in both GREED. The question is how many other oversights of non payment of taxes by these contributors to the ANC was left uninvestigated. How was the funds obtained & was the revenue ever declared & tax paid etc. etc. BUT HIGH FIVE TO SARS
SARS is undoubtedly “hands-off” when it comes to ANC aligned/politically connected organisations and perpetrators of state capture and corruption.
Still not one tax case has been prosecuted and settled whilst Kieswetter has the gall to buck pass and blame the NPA when SARS has all the necessary tools at its disposal to pursue cases using its statutory powers to seize and reverse onus of proof on the miscreants.
Meanwhile, ordinary (and extraordinary) but generally compliant middle-class taxpayers and businesses are hounded and threatened.
There is only one word for it, theft.
Haaaaa hahahahahaha! Like the lesson goes; take the log out of your eye before you comment on the splinter in mine.
Start with the Range Rovers and BMWs.
Well, it’s a good first step. Being a public document one should be able to access the breakdown of what SARS is after. And if it took 8 years to start the process, I guess everyone now has 8 years grace. Right?
If the anc does not pay you just vote DA! Then all hell will break loose and the anc will trough a wobbler! Doubt if they pay even after that.
DM please do a deep dive story into this scandal……these are the very people who purport to run South Africa ! Please publish the judgment.
Can’t complain about this!
A fine example the ANC set as the ruling party. Shouldn’t come as a surprise really. They have been unable to keep their house in order and yet they still want to govern the country with mandates like party before country and continuing scandals revolving around failed municipalities, lack of basic services, housing, infrastructure, schooling, water, electricity, state capture, failed SOE’s and corruption and on and on. Pathetic.
Imagine for a moment that a large farmer or company does this : deducts but does not pay over statutory obligations “ employee tax, UIF or the skills development levy, although it deducted these from staff”
Burnt down in a day.
They won’t mind what you take as long as it isn’t their cars. These cadres just loooove their fancy cars.
Would it be fair to says that if a private company were to do this, the people responsible would be behind bars now?
Although the ANC manifestly have no handle on …well really anything, it feels at least like a positive that they have allowed the donation cap to exist at all when it clearly doesn’t suit them.
…so it comes as no real surprise that they now appear to want to change it.
This is the same organisation that sees itself as being fit to run the country! All those unqualified, incompetent and corrupt cadres that are set loose on SAA, Telkom, SABC, Denel etc must have been well schooled at Luthuli House.
Whilst it is expected that the governing political party should comply with the laws of the country, it is a “little rich” that OUTA are criticising. They have led a campaign for citizens not to follow the law that E-tolls are paid. One cannot pick and choose the laws to obey.
Come on Sue – you must by now be aware that E-toll is unconstitutional? If it wasn’t many motorists would have been summoned and locked away.
It is tax evasion but it is also fraud: Why aren’t there criminal charges? They have stolen that money, first ftom the employees, and then from SARS. Prosecutions, please. And why not take a look at the donors who give millions – birds of a feather flock together
Wow for real. Let’s see if Kieswetter bites into the ANC with the same fervour that he applies to us normal taxpayers…. 🤔
Do they understand that if they don’t pay tax, there will be less for the government to steal?
The ANC deducting Pension & UIF contributions but not paying over, for years? This is open fraud, if not theft, is it not? It can’t be argued as a mere momentary lapse of admin because there’s a definite and systematic long-term pattern of behaviour here, aimed at receiving employees’ funds with no intent of paying over toward benefits. Lies within and lies without, who can trust a word from the ANC? Their halcyon days of fat and lather are over and whilst they kid themselves that they are still “in power”, the Truth is overtaking them. Like grist for the mill, these hapless has-beens, beset by hordes of hand-wringing hopefuls, will woefully bemoan their lost fortunes, exchanged so timorously for the fretful and parched future they have now inherited.
Take them to the cleaners. Take everything from the furniture and the TVs to the kitchen appliances to the very last teaspoon.
A bankrupt ANC cannot win elections. This country cannot survive much more of the ANC’s incompetence.
Since the NPA is too useless to do this, SARS should also then go after the criminal empires of the ANC elite. Elicit liquor and cigarette trade to name but a few.