One of the stories that made it big in the news last week was the seizure of more than 250 vehicles that were allegedly illegally imported through the abuse of tax rebates for civil servants.
The development came as a much needed lift to the tainted reputation of the supposedly corruption busters, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) who worked in a joint operation with the national tax collector, Zimra.
The celebration is indeed in order because citizens need to be law-abiding and straight. But in order to deal with this problem holistically and save the cost and energy of such massive investigations, it is necessary to establish the cause of such rampant lawlessness. As many as 20 000 civil servants are being investigated for corruption involving the abuse of import duty of vehicles.
Cognisant of the fact that civil servants are paid very little, the government offered them what they called duty free vehicle importation, which was going to be a big compensator if the government was sincere about the deal.
The current tax system in Zimbabwe requires that citizens pay 100% duty for importing a private vehicle and that vehicle must be relatively new, not older than 10 years. Civil servants were therefore going to benefit substantially from this rebate scheme and it was going to go a long way in cooling their perpetual remuneration disquiet.
The fact however is that civil servants, the majority of whom are teachers, nurses and the ordinary clerk and cleaner in government offices, earn an average USD400 and saving for a vehicle from that salary is not easy given the cost of living in this country.
The law has also fixed the maximum tax rebate in such a way that Grades B and C in which the majority of civil servants fall, are entitled to only USD$2 500 tax rebate.
The average market price for the cheapest vehicle that was manufactured less than 10 years ago is USD$4 000 and that automatically disqualifies the civil servant, unless they can find more money to top up. The government says there is a CMED loan facility but needless to say, accessing that facility is virtually impossible for the ordinary civil servant.
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So, faced with a situation where they cannot raise enough to buy a vehicle that is less than 10-years-old, and when their tax rebate threshold is below US$$2 500, the civil servant realises there is no legal way to benefit from this rebate opportunity.
That is why 20 000 civil servants have been caught on the wrong side of the law and are now being referred to as fraudsters. Many more are managing to slip through the net while thousands non-civil servants including government bigwigs, politicians and unscrupulous businesspeople are taking advantage of the many loopholes in this warped civil servants rebate system.
The government should act sincere and craft a law that is meant to benefit civil servants genuinely. They should raise the vehicle duty free threshold for the majority of civil servants to levels that allow them to benefit and not make fools out of them.
