Industry will not be ready by the August 1 deadline for the SA Revenue Service (Sars) enhanced manifest regulation, Reporting of Conveyances and Goods (RCG), and a survey by the revenue authority will prove that, according to industry commentators.
This comes in the wake of an FTW article last week in which Sars acting chief officer: Customs & Excise, Beyers Theron, denied rumours that the pending cargo reporting would be postponed, but said they were waiting for the results of a trade readiness survey.
Come August 1 the revenue service will be enforcing penalties for noncompliance with RCG. “They are waiting for a survey to show results before they decide to postpone or not. You don’t need a survey to know that industry is not ready,” a clearing agent told FTW.
“There is no way that will change before August 1. In fact, I would go so far as to say the majority are not submitting cargo reports at the moment.” Addressing the Port Liaison Forum (PLF) in Cape Town recently, customs expert Jean Pool agreed saying there was a huge gap in industry with a large section of companies not submitting cargo reports at all.
A variety of reasons existed for this, he said. “To do cargo reporting to customs one has to be registered for EDI communication with Sars, but the interface with the revenue service is not like e-filing where you can just submit your input,” he explained. “One has to make use of a proprietary system that you have to develop yourself complying with EDI protocols, or alternatively make use of third party service providers.”
Herein lies one of the major challenges with RCG, say the clearing agents, other than the time challenges. “The platform for the submission of these reports is not up and running,” said one. This includes the platform of global companies operating in this space. “It is anyone’s guess what will happen come August,” said another agent. RCG went live in April this year with Sars focusing specifically on the Durban harbour.
During this time Sars met with stakeholders expressing concern over meeting the deadline. Reasons given by stakeholders for not being ready included local and global technical development that was outstanding, the wide ambit of reporting required, and the time needed to ensure that all entities were ready to report.
Industry stakeholders are also concerned that Sars does not require any of the third-party service providers providing the interface platforms to license and register with the revenue service.
“Their platforms are being used for the transmission of data, so surely they must also be accountable for providing relevant systems in correct formats,” said one agent. “The responsibility is being placed 100% with the trader and not with the IT providers that are now proving not to be ready and no one knows when they will be.”
Theron said that while Sars engaged actively with trade and took heed of their concerns, the reporting obligation was derived from the Customs Control Act promulgated in 2014 and based on three sets of legal rules that had gone through a consultative process over a number of months before being finalised and published in the current Customs and Excise Act, 1964, as the legislative basis for the RCG implementation.
“It is concerning to see that despite this, and the fact that automated cargo reporting to Sars has been around since 2003 with previous cargo systems (MAS/ACM and MPR), trade still has not readied themselves for full reporting.”
Theron said that the results of the survey were still being considered before Sars made a decision on the current August 1 enforcement deadline.
“However people who do not meet their obligations must be held accountable.”
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Many companies are not submitting cargo reports at all. – Jean Pool
