South Africa says that there is a huge deficit of revenue collection in the country, which resultantly lowered the national economy. South African Government thinks it is time to collect extra revenue in the form of taxes and that has to come out from the pockets of crypto investors.
A report has been published recently in the South African financial sector. This report suggested that South African crypto investors are well aware that they could be liable to pay crypto taxes in the future. However, wary of this fact, they are not interested to bear the further burden of tax for the time being.
In the report, an expert opinion has also been made part, which has been authored by Thomas Lobban. In this opinion, Lobban weighs the possibility of crypto tax imposed by the South African Revenue Service (SARS). He was of the opinion that he is in the knowledge that SARS has been working on the imposition of crypto tax. He said that the authority believes that it has failed to collect enough revenue to keep the national economy stable. However, in order to ensure stability, it has to collect more revenue and that will come only from those with big pockets.
Lobban believes that SARS has already pointed out their targets and he thinks that the majority would be those from the South African crypto industry. Lobban then further envisages that if Government is diverting attention towards crypto owners, then that would be natural. He said that the South African crypto industry is currently one of the influential crypto industries of the world. South African crypto investors will have to own their responsibility that they owe tax towards SARS because of their crypto trading.
He said that it does not matter whether they like it or not, but they will be paying this tax right now or later. If they would be contesting the tax, then the effects of such an action would be apparent on the crypto trading and investors. He said that for instance, currently, the world governments are working on issuing crypto regulations. In addition, already there is much evidence against crypto suggesting that it is a major source of laundering money.
In these circumstances, Lobban said that if crypto investors would try to raise any hurdles against the government, then it would not be in anyone’s favor. Neither it will serve any purpose to the government nor will it be any good for institutions and individuals attached with crypto trading.
Furthermore, in the report, Lobban discussed different kinds of taxes that could be imposed upon different crypto trading. For instance, there is a high possibility that SARS would be collecting tax on crypto trading under the head of “capital tax”. Similarly, in case of a trade taking place between two digital assets, even then the authority will be authorized to levy and collect tax.
