Addressing the small business tax compliance burden: Evidence from South Africa

Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Addressing the small business tax compliance burden: Evidence from South Africa
 
Creator Smulders, Sharon Naidoo, Gelishan
 
Subject small business; South African Revenue Service (SARS); tax compliance burden; tax compliance costs; tax initiatives
Description Small businesses have the potential to grow the economy, generate jobs and reduce poverty, but they face many constraints including high tax compliance costs and burdens. A comparison of the findings and recommendations made in small business tax compliance cost studies conducted in South Africa with initiatives introduced by the South African Revenue Service (SARS), substantiated by consultations with a SARS and a South African Institute of Chartered Accountants official, reveals that SARS has, in most cases, attempted to address the tax compliance burdens identified in these studies. However, SARS has only partially addressed the complexity of the tax law, the lack of software to assist small businesses with their record-keeping and the compliance burden associated with provisional tax. SARS has failed to address the need for a threshold below which no small business tax return is required to be submitted, the inclusion of tax in the school syllabus, the requirement for first-time offenders to attend courses instead of raising penalties and the need for a reduction in the rates of interest and penalties raised by SARS. These initiatives should be considered by SARS and it is recommended that further research into the success and effectiveness of all the initiatives already introduced by SARS be performed.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2013-04-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion —
Format application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jef.v6i1.275
 
Source Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences; Vol 6, No 1 (2013); 33-54 2312-2803 1995-7076
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jefjournal.org.za/index.php/jef/article/view/275/355
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Sharon Smulders, Gelishan Naidoo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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