SARS calls for lifestyle audits of citizens living luxurious lives
- South Africans who are privileged to be living a luxurious life should undergo lifestyle audits, according to Judge Dennis Davis
- Davis, who is the chairperson of the Tax Review Committee, says that SARS would recover more money by doing so
- According to Davis, South Africans who live the high life but report a smaller income need to be checked out
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A few South Africans have the privilege to live the "soft life", with some driving expensive cars and living in luxurious mansions.
According to a report by BusinessTech, Judge Dennis Davis who is the chairperson of the Tax Review Committee insists that more lifestyle audits should be done on these citizens.
Davis says that the South African Revenue Service (SARS) needs to ramp up the lifestyle audits on citizens who are living the high life.
In an interview with 702, Davis revealed that SARS has a shortfall between R50 million and R100 billion each year. 5 000 to 6 000 South Africans have a taxable income of more than R5 million.
Source: Getty Images
According to Davis, SARS will be able to make up the shortfall if lifestyle audits are conducted on wealthy South Africans.
"If you take R5 million as the top bracket, there are a lot of rich people who probably have a lot more than that and are not disclosing it," said Davis.
If a South African drives a car that is worth R3 million but they only report a taxable income of R100 000, Davis insists that SARS is entitled to ask for an explanation for this.
“This year I am hopeful we will get some of these ‘low-hanging fruit’ back into the tax net," he said.
In other news, Briefly.co.za reported that SA born Elon Musk beat Jeff Bezos to become the richest person on earth. After several months, Elon Musk of Tesla has finally become the richest man on the planet, displacing Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos.
What made that possible was a 4.8% share price increase of Tesla Inc on Thursday, January 7, which secured Elon’s first place among the world’s 500 richest people, Bloomberg reports.
As of 10:15am, the co-owner of the electronic car company was worth $188.5 billion as he made a gain of $1.5 billion over the Amazon chief.
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Source: Briefly News
