More players invited to supply fiscal devices

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Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
THE Government has invited more applications for the supply electronic fiscal devices following concerns by the business community over inefficient service by approved dealers.

Early this week, the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz) urged the Government to liberalise the supply of fiscal devices to address a myriad of challenges businesses were facing in attempting to install the machines.

Emcoz has expressed displeasure over the fiscalisation programme as the devices can only be accessed from suppliers approved by Zimra.

Among other concerns, Emcoz highlighted that the approved suppliers’ prices were over the top compared to suppliers outside the country and that the approved suppliers were usually out of stock and normally a deposit was needed to order the devices.

Failure to comply attracts penalties of up to $25 a day and such businesses will not be issued with tax clearance certificates and thus they cannot trade, said Emcoz.

In light of the challenges businesses were facing regarding the fiscalisation exercise, the employers’ representative body called for the liberalisation of the acquisition of the fiscal devices.

“Consistent with the 2017 national budget, Government intends to license additional suppliers of the electronic fiscal devices to complement the existing six suppliers,” said Treasury in a statement.

“VAT registered operators will exercise their discretion on their supplier of choice for electronic fiscal devices. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, hereby, invites interested companies to submit applications for the supply of electronic fiscal devices.”

Interested companies should be registered with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) and have valid tax clearance certificate.

The Government introduced the fiscalised recording of taxable transactions programme in 2010 with a view to enhancing revenue collections through minimising tax fraud.

The programme entails the use of fiscalised electronic registers and fiscal memory devices that would be connected to the Zimra server and are capable of transmitting in real-time taxable transactions of VAT registered operators.

Through fiscalisation all businesses under category C are required to register for VAT and operators who were fiscalised in terms of the VAT regulations of 2010 but had not yet interfaced or linked their fiscal devices with the Zimra server were required to have done so by January 1, 2017.

The system also entails that businesses in VAT categories A, B and D should have fiscalised their operations by the stipulated date.

Companies that fall in category C are those with an annual turnover of $240 000.

Categories A and B are those registered operators who are submitting returns after every two months while category D clients submit returns on a seasonal basis, or as agreed with the Commissioner General.

@okazunga

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