Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
School of Financial Sciences
Department of Taxation
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) introduced its Service Charter in 2005, to be fully effective from the beginning of the 2008 tax year. The intention of this charter is to set out specific service delivery targets, which SARS aims to achieve. To get an indication of the progress made by SARS on its service quality journey, a questionnaire was sent out to tax practitioners (professional accountants and bookkeepers) registered with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), the South African Institute of Professional Accountants (SAIPA) or the South African Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (SAICB), with the aim of establishing their perceptions about the service quality of certain services mentioned in the Service Charter. An electronic Internet-based questionnaire was selected as the research instrument for conducting the research. The questionnaire was developed by a team consisting of the World Bank survey experts and a South African consultant (a senior lecturer in the Department of Taxation at the University of Pretoria). The results of these perceptions were made available to SARS. SARS introduced reforms to address most of the areas in the Service Charter (and the Acts) that proved to be problematic from the survey results. Only in respect of the following areas were reforms not specifically introduced: receipt of an income and employees’ tax registration number, attendance to taxpayer by SARS if no appointment was made and the number of calls before a query was sufficiently addressed. Where reforms were introduced, the following areas are those where the reform initiatives only partly solved the shortcoming of SARS as found in the survey performed: processing a tax return during off-peak periods, responding to written correspondence and answering telephone calls by SARS. Both these areas, that is, those where no reforms were introduced and those where reforms were introduced but which only partially solved the problem, should provide SARS with good justification for motivating the areas on which it will be focusing its attention in respect of future reform initiatives
Contact person: Ms SA Smulders.
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