GOVERNMENT is considering incentives to motivate and encourage the nation to adhere to the TaxCore Electronic Invoicing programme.
Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg said in due time, they will announce prizes that will be awarded to people who have receipts or slops with specified TaxCore code.
This was during the Finance in Focus yesterday, clearing confusion around the electronic TaxCore system and the newly launched TV licence import permit project.
The TaxCore system is a new electronic invoicing solution designed to simplify compliance, improve transparency, strengthen revenue assurance and enhance efficiency through real-time transaction reporting.
He said the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) was trying to close the gaps in the country’s value added tax (VAT) system, which is collected towards the fiscus.
He noted that some shops and retailers do not remit the VAT collected from Emaswati. He said through TaxCore, ERS would ensure that every transaction was automatically communicated to ERS.
He said the receipts will have a special code to show that the shop is part of the TaxCore team. He appealed to the nation that when the launch happens they have the right receipts.
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The minister urged the nation to be vigilant and verify all official government communication through authorised platforms.
“The law is going to say that every shop has to provide this. Many shops will possibly try to cheat the VAT system giving different reasons. We appeal to Emaswati to be vigilant, we will even consider incentives, possibly prizes to be won for people that have slips and every month there are prizes or possibly a small amount of VAT to come back to people.
“So once you have your slips you can lodge them and then claim a small percentage of your VAT back.
“We encourage Emaswati to virtually be policemen with us as a government to make sure that all of the retailers are really using the system. If they use the system, we are confident that the VAT will be paid back to government,” said Rijkenberg.
Rijkenberg noted that the country was losing a lot of tax through VAT corruption and VAT fraud hence the need to close those gaps.
