Are you on a right direction?

Have you heard about “Seth Godin”? He is famously known as ultimate entrepreneur for information age. Furthermore, he is a renowned writer having published around seventeen (17) books addressing various aspects such as marketing, advertising, business venturing and leadership. One of his famous adage is quoted “It is never too late to start heading in the Right Direction”.

Being on a right direction is distinctly different on the basis of people category. For instance, for students it might mean staying on course to achieving excellence in their exams, for business leaders it might mean staying on course to realizing their organization’s vision and mission and for taxpayers it might simply mean being in full compliance with relevant provisions of tax law thereon averting unnecessary controversies with the taxman.

There are number of ways that can aid taxpayers’ quest in achieving full compliance with relevant provisions of tax law thereon averting unnecessary controversies with the taxman. Below, I highlight several ways to be adopted by taxpayers in such quest;

                                           i.       Proper Records Management

The legal precedence established in the case of SBC Tanzania Limited Vs Commissioner General (2008) 2TTLR 21 cemented taxpayers’ legal burden in furnishing documentary evidence to support the incurrence of certain expenses to the taxman. In that regard, it is the duty of every taxpayer to ensure relevant documentary evidence to support including but not limited to expenses incurrence, asset write-offs, asset acquisitions and bad debt write offs are accurately ready if ever requested by the taxman.

                                                   ii.       Experts Engagement

“Ignorance of the law is never an excuse”, it is a legal principle which stresses that one can’t defend her actions by claiming ignorance of the law. In the tax space, several usual transactions may have profound tax implications or regular executed contracts may give rise to potential tax implications. Hence, taxpayers should normalize engaging tax experts to ascertain their tax compliance with relevant provisions of the tax law.

                                iii.       Timely and Accurate Tax Remittance

One of the ways to avert taxman’s imposition of interest and penalties in relation to late payment of taxes and taxman’s institution of recovery measures is vide timely and accurate tax remittance. To realize this, taxpayers should conduct regular reviews on their tax positions to ensure accurate and timely settlement of all relevant tax liabilities. This goes concurrently with timely submission of relevant tax returns.

                       iv.       Tax Amendment, Update and Transformation

The tax space is usually characterized by periodic amendments in the tax law provisions, tax updates say in terms of decided tax cases or tax transformation in terms of tax digital innovations or improvements. In that regard, taxpayers should ensure they are on par with tax transformations, are timely updated on tax decisions and are fully aware of the relevant tax amendments in the tax law provisions.

Benedict is a tax enthusiast and the views expressed herein are his own personal views.