Published: 26 May 2014

Zimra has suspended the attachment of property belonging to defaulting tax payers to give them room to raise money to pay off their arrears, a senior official said.

ZIMRA head of audit for Manicaland Mr Willy Chishakwe said the order was issued recently to give room to tax payers to craft payment plans.

"Most companies have been complaining about the tax burden and some of them ended up failing to pay the tax completely leading to the attachment of their property.

"The order came from the commissioner general Mr Gershem Pasi who thought it was proper to come up with such a move," said Mr Chishakwe.

Most companies have been pleading with Government for temporary exemption from paying tax due to the liquidity crunch.

Mr Chishakwe said ZIMRA is urging tax payers to come up with payment plans that will help them to pay off their arrears while remaining operational.

"Since dollarisation of the economy most of the companies have been struggling and accumulating tax arrears leading to attachment of property and we think the suspension of property attachment by the commissioner general will give firms space to recover and improve production, which will increase revenue collected," said Mr Chishakwe.

Close to 100 companies shut down between 2012 and last year. The few surviving firms are presently saddled with huge debts and battling with low capacity utilisation largely due to antiquated machinery and lack of working capital against high labour costs.
- The Herald

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