31 Mar 2014

An official of the Botswana Unified Revenue services ( BURS)  has told the Kgatleng District councillors that her organisation is working with the education ministry to ensure that students are taught about tax.

The BURS general manager responsible for taxpayer services, Ms Vivian Lesedi  said they had realised that it was important for children to learn tax matters from a young age hence BURS had partnered with the Ministry of Education and Skills Development to develop a curriculum which would address tax issues to be taught from primary schools.

She said BURS had completed a strategic document which would be in operation for the next five years. Ms Lesedi further said they had engaged a records manager whose role was to reconcile all information on all taxpayers.

She said the plan was to have an e-recorded information adding that soon people would be able to e-file their tax returns. In response to the presentation, the deputy council chairperson of Kgatleng District Council Rev. Mpho Moruakgomo encouraged the BURS to make paying tax a friendly obligation. 

Rev.  Moruakgomo said many Batswana did not understand the importance of paying tax to their government. He said this had created tax evasion problems because many did not have knowledge that tax played a critical role in the administration of every government.

Rev. Moruakgomo implored BURS to undertake outreach programmes to communities and teach Batswana at large to understand the role that tax played in the economy.

He said some countries had made it a point that their citizens understand the role tax played in their government and this had made it simple for people to pay tax, in the process creating massive revenues for their countries.

Some councilors argued against long queues at BURS, saying the queues caused delays in filing tax returns. Nominated councilor, Thuso Thebe requested BURS to consider exempting dormant companies from filing tax returns as they did not have any source of income that forced them to file tax returns.

He argued that some companies had been charged tax on money they never had saying that  created problems for such people. Councilor Kgetse Kgetse concurred with his colleague’s arguments that it was important for people to know rental money was taxed. 

Ms Lesedi encouraged councillors to tell their electorates that they could also use the Post office to file their tax returns. Ends