BY BUSINESS EDITOR
MBABANE – Umhlanga Proclean (Pty) Ltd was best evaluated for the Revenue Appeals Tribunal Eswatini (RATE) contract.
This was revealed by the Eswatini Public Procurement Regulatory Agency (ESPPRA) on their website.
The intention to award the company was published TODAY and they are expected to begin executing it after 10 working days, should they not be contested.
According to the regulator, RATE was looking for a company to supply them with three motor vehicles. The proposed contract price by the best-evaluated tenderer was over E100 000 when evaluated.
As the requesting entity, RATE was also in charge of the procuring of the tender as well as its approvals. RATE requested unsuccessful bidders to apply for review with the agency within 10 working days. “All tenderers who submitted bids are hereby notified that a period of 10 working days is hereby allowed for submission of any application for review,” said RATE.
Worth noting, since its inception in 2020, the Revenue Appeals Tribunal Eswatini (RATE) has received 15 appeal cases and nine of those were Income Tax appeal cases.
According to the RATE case summary reports, nine cases were Income Tax appeals, while four were of Value Added Tax (VAT) and two were Customs appeals. Worth noting is that RATE was established under Section 3 of The Revenue Appeals Tribunal Act, 2019 and mandated to hear and determine appeals arising from decisions of the commissioner general of the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS).
The tribunal is a special semi-judicial body consisting of a panel of experts, who are officially appointed by the government but act independently to ease the backlog of revenue cases by resolving them outside the hierarchy of the regular court system.
The first case was an Income tax – Gross Income – 2016-2019 Pay As You Earn (PAYE) audit assessment- Benefits in kind. In this case, the appellant (a prominent school) offers its employees a children’s educational assistance program in which the school fees of children of employees of the school are calculated using marginal cost to the employer, which is a lesser amount of school fees than that of non- employee parents whose children are enrolled at the school.
The appellant (school) disputes the valuation of the benefit by the Respondent. It is worth noting that this case was concluded to the effect that ruled in favour of the school in that the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) erred in the taxation of such benefits to their teachers.
