By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
ABOUT K3 billion has been paid out by the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) under Value Added Tax (VAT) refunds during the first quarter of this year. The largest portion of this amount has been channelled to the mining sector, says ZRA Commissioner General, Kingsley Chanda. Mr Chanda said ZRA was committed to paying all VAT refunds, emphasising that the organisation on average of every month paid claims amounting to K850 million.
He said ZRA would continue to refund an average of K850 million every month but indicated that in some months refund claims were higher than what was budgeted for, paying about K1 billion. “You many recall we had a lot of arrears that arose from the time we had issues with VAT Rule 18, which was later resolved and had to change the regulation to accommodate the challenges the tax payers had,” he said in an interview.
Mr Chanda explained that ZRA’s strategy was to pay current claims, while setting aside funds to deal with more arrears. “So far we have done just under K3 billion in refunds in the first quarter of 2021 and we are focused a lot on the mining industry because as you are aware they are the biggest claimants of refunds because of their nature of their business. “I can safely confirm that just under K3 billion had so far been paid in fact the last payments we were making was April 1, 2021 and we will continue with that programme,” Mr Chanda said.
He explained that the VAT claims were either paid in cash or by offsetting against the tax payers current taxes. “We do pay refunds in form of cash and we also for those that are willing, we do offset against their current taxes through a strategy we have managed to strategically reduce arrears but one thing I can confirm here is that as we dismantle arrears more refunds come in because that is the nature of the tax,” Mr Chanda said. He said ZRA would ensure that all those that exports had to be refunded. Mr Chanda expressed concern that ZRA’s resource basket had been constrainted, especially in 2020 and this year as well.
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