The Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) says it paid a total of K9.4 billion in 2018 in terms of Value Added Tax (VAT) refunds to various businesses.
Speaking during a press briefing in Lusaka on the 2018 financial year, ZRA Commissioner General Kingsley Chanda says out of this amount, 78% was paid to the mining sector while 22% was paid to other sectors in the economy.
Mr. Chanda is confident that going forward, the outstanding VAT refunds will be a thing of the past once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is implemented this year.
He has emphasized that all legitimate VAT claims will be paid after forensic audits despite implementation of the GST after April 1st 2019.
Mr. Chanda clarifies that the authority has 15, 000 VAT registered taxpayers and that only 15 are major mining companies.
He says the mines are also owing the government in different taxes which is more than what the authority is owing them in terms of VAT refunds.
On revenue performance, the ZRA boss says ZRA exceeded its revenue target of K44.7 billion for the 2018 financial year by K3.8 billion.
“Total gross revenue collection reached at K57.8 billion while total refunds amounted to K9.4 billion thereby registering total net collection of K48.5 billion or 18% of GDP compared to the targeted 16.2%,” he said.
Mr. Chanda has attributed this positive performance to higher than programmed revenue collections under all three tax categories namely Direct Taxes, Indirect Taxes and Trade Taxes which posted surpluses of K216 million, K1.6 billion and K1.97 billion respectively.
“The growth in terms of revenue for the year to date period compared to the same period in 2017 was 24% compared to a 14% revenue growth rate projected for the same period. This performance relates to revenues collected by ZRA only and does not include the performance of non-tax revenues collected by other government agencies,” he clarifies.

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