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Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter

THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) has blamed the failure by businesses to secure 2021 tax clearance certificates on congestion caused by clients applying at the same time after the expiry of the extended tax clearance submission deadline.

In a public notice, Zimra said its electronic platform was functional but has been overwhelmed by concurrent applications it was subjected to leading to poor performance.

In this context, efforts were being made to address the system congestion challenges being experienced.

“The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority would like to sincerely apologise for the challenges that our valued clients have been experiencing with our E-services system in applying for the tax clearance certificates for 2021.

“This has been worsened by the congestion due to very high user traffic applying at the same time, following the expiry of the previously extended tax clearance submission deadline.

“The system is operational and our Information Communication Technology team is attending to system congestion challenges to improve the system performance,” said Zimra.

In addition to addressing the technical challenges, the tax authority said it was taking steps to clear the client service backlog for ITF263, FTR1 or tax clearance certificates, outstanding tax returns, and outstanding tax compliance issues among other services.

The corrective steps that are being taken to return the service to normalcy include the ICT team adding capacity to the infrastructure, which will improve the logging process on the system by taxpayers.

Zimra said its technical team was directly engaging taxpayers who have reported their challenges and is assisting them to access their tax clearance certificates.

Zimra is also working with the vendor (Microsoft) to enhance the system capacity so that it is able to handle multiple requests at the same time.

“Currently the majority of the taxpayers are able to log on and submit their requests. However, due to non-compliance with some clients the system is not issuing them tax clearance certificates.” The authority advised its clients to ensure they are compliant in all respects before submitting their applications (fiscalisation interface, return submission and tax payments).

“In the interim, compliant taxpayers who fail to get their ITF263 through the system are advised to communicate with their assigned liaison officers by electronic mail so that they are assisted manually to download their ITF263 (tax clearances),” said the authority. – @okazunga