Misheck
Shambare
Opinion
For
vendors in the country, it never rains but it pours.
Recently
the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) announced that it was going to descend
on vendors and force them to pay tax from $2-$5 per day.
Vendors
who usually play cat and mouse games with the city council inspectors and the
Zimbabwe Republic Police while selling at undesignated points now have to
contend with the national taxman.
Given
the meager profits they make from their vending, this new move by ZIMRA is
bound to make their trade much leaner.
The
question that emerges is how can Zimra tax vendors who are already struggling
with life with ever continuing deterioration of our economy.
With
media reports that Zimra has failed to meet its revenue target for the first
half of the year owing to the current liquidity crunch and company closures,
collecting tax from vendors can only be seen as a measure of desperation by the
authority.
Zimra
would be better placed plugging loopholes in its own heavily porous internal
systems.
Let’s
take for instance that the authority is responsible for collecting all the
taxes at all border posts in the country.
It is a service that it is not doing so well due to their system which
is regularly criticized on the basis of allegations of corruption.
Most
goods that enter the country are some of them pass through the boarders without
even paying the customs duty because of people within the system of Zimra who
are heavily shady.
I once
travelled to South Africa where I needed to buy some items for my family and on
my way back the bus was loaded with several goods purchased by people there.
Instead of the Zimra authority to come and do his duties at the bus they just
instructed the driver to come with their amount which I did not think was
equivalent to all the goods that were in the bus.
As for
me I only paid a quarter of the money of the goods that I did purchase from
South Africa through the loopholes.
As a
result a lot of revenue was lost because the bus was loaded with cross boarder
traders because of incompetence of the Zimra officials.
One cross
boarder trader who was on the bus exposed that this has become the way of their
life that they will just approach the driver and make him pay their duty
through dappled means as this will benefit them in the long run of their
business.
In the
end many people are finding it easier to do their shopping outside the country.
In fact many people when they think of buying clothes or house hold furniture
they will just cross the border and buy there because it will be cheaper. In
its place of Zimra promoting the “Buy Zimbabwe” campaign they are letting it
down.
