By Kefiloe Kajane
The Lesotho Revenue Authority (LRA) this week launched its latest online service, the Online Value Added Tax (VAT 11) certificate.
Vat 11 is a certificate of transfer of registrable goods or change of ownership that has details of the transferor/seller of registrable goods. This could be things like cars.
LRA commissioner general Thabo Khasipe says this new service that will now be accessed online is their way of trying to decrease queues at their offices and also giving clients the convenience to give access services wherever they are.
He said this is part of their five-year plan that started in 2018 to improve their service delivery.
He explained that it took people about three days to access a VAT 11 certificate because of long queues.
“We want to avoid all those delays and inconveniences. We started by introducing the tax clearance certificate system which proved to be a success and we realised that continuing wouldn’t be a bad idea. People will now be able to sell their cars without worrying about the delay that will happen when they are supposed to get the VAT 11 certificate.
“Our purpose and end game is that we want to get to a point where people will not have to worry about applying for VAT 11 as we will work directly with the traffic department. Everything will be found online and traffic would easily be able to check if the person is clear with LRA.
“The decision to shift more towards online services, will not only save our clients the costs of travelling to LRA offices but also it will save LRA millions of Maluti in forms and printing expenses.”
The LRA chief emphasized that spending less on collection is what they actually plan to achieve. He added that there would be no point in the taxman claiming to be collecting tax while spending much more to do so.
“We want to get to a point where we will be like other countries that maximize tax collection by spending less. I thank our information technology department for the good work they have done with the online service. We would not have achieved all this without team work.”
