Cape Town - The SA Revenue Service (Sars) received more than 18.2 million employees’ tax certificates or IRP5s showing PAYE collection of R421.1billion last year.
According to the latest statistics released jointly by Sars and the National Treasury, personal income tax (PIT) is South Africa’s largest source of tax revenue, and contributed 38.3% of the total tax revenue collected in 2018/19, reflecting a marginal increase in the contribution share of 38.1% in 2017/18. Sars identified nearly 13.1million unique individuals and an analysis of the IRP5 certificates linked to them shows that 6.1 million were female taxpayers and 7 million were male.
A statement from Sars and the Treasury read: “These unique individuals should not be regarded as an indication of the number of people working in the formal labour market.
“Some individuals who are not formally employed are also issued with IRP5 certificates. These include individuals who receive benefits from retirement funds or annuities. Sars could not link all the IRP5 certificates to specific individuals as some certificates were incorrectly completed by employers or contained inaccurate information.”
Meanwhile, 1 342 511 (27.3%) of assessed taxpayers were aged 35 to 44 years; and 1 976 674 (40.2%) of assessed taxpayers were registered in Gauteng, of whom 636 460 lived in the Johannesburg metro and were taxed on an average taxable income of R446 838. The Western Cape came second with15.39% or 753652 taxpayers.
The National Treasury and Sars have published the 12th annual
edition of the tax statistics.
The 2019 edition provides an
overview of tax-revenue collections and tax-return information for the 2015 to 2018 tax years, as well as the 2014/15 to 2018/19 fiscal years.
Most individuals receive their income as salaries or wages (75.8%), pension or annuity payments and investment income.
@MwangiGithahu
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za