SARS Ready to Roll Out Mobi Monitoring as part of RGC

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has indicated that it is going the extra mile to accommodate trade in its ongoing implementation of digital manifest declarations, Reporting of Conveyances and Goods (RCG).

SARS Project Manager Michael Lekala identified three elements that were part of the next implementation stage – “Phase 2B”. Michael briefly touched on two elements which are e-ease and e-penalty.

E-Ease: An e-ease relates to an event where a manifest has been opened but no declaration has been received. Once an e-ease has been opened, it will allow SARS to take the necessary action.

E-penalty: an e-penalty will be the consequence where a manifest has not been submitted.

This implementation involves on-the-spot recording of all the interactions between the tax authority and trade as a result of enforcement activities that take place in the field.

Lekala said, “We want our officers to record each enforcement intervention they make. So when they stop something for example, on the basis of identified risk, the reaction of the detector dog unit, or an observation, they would have to open and record a case on a mobile device”.

Moreover, Mobi will enable SARS to send timely updates to freight forwarders and shippers about the status of goods. More importantly, Mobi checking will significantly speed up the monitoring process on SARS’ end, allowing trade to respond and hopefully rectify declarations to avoid unnecessary delays.

The introduction of this would further enhance risk data in order to improve case selection at transactional and entity level.