TBL loses appeal, must pay 6.5bn/- to TRA

DODOMA: THE Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) is to pay over 6.5bn/- to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) as tax for business conducted between April 2016 and December 2017.

This follows a decision of the Court of Appeal, which dismissed with costs the appeal lodged by TBL, public limited company to challenge findings of the Tax Revenue Appeals Tribunal by upholding the decision of Tax Revenue Appeals Board regarding such tax assessment.

Justices Mary Levira, Lilian Mashaka and Deo Nangela ruled in favour of the Commissioner General of TRA after holding that the appeal in question was devoid of merits.

During hearing of the appeal, counsel for TBL, the appellant, had complained that the Tribunal erred in law in failing to hold that, in terms of section 68 (1) of the Value Added Tax of 2014, the TRA was wrong to reject their input tax for 2016 and 2017 and demand for the alleged unpaid output value added tax.

They argued further that the Tribunal erred in law by failing to consider section 69 (2) and (3) of the Act properly and to hold that it could not consider and evaluate the evidence provided by the appellant to support input tax claims in terms of section 86 of the Value Added Tax Act, 2014.

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In addition, the appellant submitted that the Tax Revenue Appeals Tribunal erred in law to hold that the respondent was correct to impose interest as per section 78 (1) of the Tax Administration Act.

In their judgment, the justices pointed out that section 68 of the VAT Act gives a right to the tax payer to claim input tax which is not automatic, as the taxable person has to satisfy conditions under section 86 (1) and (2) of the VAT Act, including disclosure of the name or particulars of a tax payer.

“The evidence is the tax invoice generated by the EFD or a fiscal receipt must contain the name, address, taxpayer identification number and value-added registration number of the customer,” they said in the judgment delivered in Dodoma recently.

In the present case, the appellant presented manual receipts which did not contain the name of the appellant, TIN number and value-added registration number hence in contravention of section 86 (1) (b) (v) of the VAT Act.