Large companies avoiding tax in South Africa: taxman

CAPE TOWN- South Africa has accused large multinational companies of using complex transactions to illegally reduce local tax payments, costing Africa’s largest economy billions of rand.

“We have detected an increase in the use of cross-border structuring and transfer pricing manipulations by businesses to unfairly and illegally reduce their local tax liabilities,” Oupa Magashula, commissioner at the South African Revenue Service,(SARS) told parliament’s finance committee on Tuesday.

African countries are vulnerable to higher revenue loss through tax crimes because of a lack of knowledge on detecting and prosecuting sophisticated evasion tactics.

This story is for NewsDay subscribers.