PRETORIA, 04 November 2014 – The 2014 Tax Statistics bulletin was released today. This is the seventh edition of the publication.
The objective of releasing the country’s Tax Statistics is to publicise available, comprehensive tax revenue data that can assist policy makers and provide insights on economic indicators to researchers, analysts, the media and the public in general.
The 2014 Tax Statistics Bulletin provides an overview of tax revenue collection and tax return information for the 2009/10 to 2013/14 fiscal years, and the 2010 to 2013 tax years respectively.
Worldwide, tax statistics are assuming more prominence in the formulation and evaluation of fiscal policy as well as policies on employment and income as informed by socio-economic research.
The World Bank, the OECD, stakeholders from government, including Statistics South Africa and the South African Reserve Bank, continue to make use of the publication. The Davis Tax Committee, in its evaluation of South Africa’s tax system, made extensive use of Tax Statistics published previously.
- For the 2013 tax, there were 15.4 million registered individual taxpayers. There were 6.7 million individuals who contributed to Personal Income Tax (PIT). PIT was the largest source of total revenue collected for 2013/14 totalling R310.9 billion (34.5%).
- For the 2012 tax year nearly 2.2 million companies were registered for different tax types that apply to businesses. Some 625 808 companies were assessed by SARS. About a third of companies that were assessed had positive taxable income (profit); about a third had taxable income equal to zero and the remaining third reported an assessed loss. Corporate Income Tax (CIT) was the third largest contributor to total revenue for 2013/14, totalling R179.5 billion (19.8%). Of the total number of companies assessed by SARS for the 2012 tax year, 112 170 were Small Business Corporations (SBCs) and paid tax at the applicable graduated income tax rate instead of a fixed CIT rate of 28%.
- For the 2013/14 fiscal year there were 662 194 entities registered for Value-Added-Tax (VAT) of which 420 785 (63.5%) were active. VAT collections grew by 10.5% for 2013/14 compared to the previous fiscal year. VAT was the second largest contributor to total tax revenue for 2013/14, totalling R237.7 billion (26.4%).
- Chapter 1: Revenue Collections provides a summary of aggregate tax revenue collection trends from 2009/10 to 2013/14.
- Chapter 2: Personal Income Tax (PIT) gives an overview of assessed personal income tax revenues of registered individual taxpayers. It also provides information about taxable income by income group, age, gender, municipality of residence and source of income, as well as fringe benefits, allowances and deductions.
- Chapter 3: Company Income Tax (CIT) gives an overview of company income tax revenues. Information about taxable income by income group, sector and type of business as declared in the tax returns is also provided.
- Chapter 4: Value-Added Tax (VAT) provides a breakdown of VAT liabilities, receipts and refunds, by sector and payment category, as well as an overview of input and output VAT data derived from VAT returns submitted by vendors.
- Chapter 5: Import VAT and Customs Duties provides information about the customs value of imported goods by product type, according to the Harmonised System (HS) at chapter level, as well as Import VAT, Customs duty and Ad valorem excise duty revenues on imported goods.
- Chapter 6: Other Taxes and Collections provides information about taxes such as Capital Gains Tax (CGT), Transfer duty, Mineral and Petroleum Resources Royalty (MPRR) (previously provided in Chapter 1), Southern African Customs Union (SACU) payments and Diesel refunds.
