A betrayal of our posterity
Friday, May 25, 2018
Through practices such as money-laundering, trade mis-invoicing and the abuse of transfer pricing, corporates and individuals in Botswana have perfected the art of sidestepping BURS over the years, assisted by tax advisories both locally and abroad. Money-laundering involves concealing the source or purpose of “dirty” money while trade mis-invoicing is a practice of falsifying import or export values to trick the taxman.
Transfer pricing, a term most Batswana are ignorant about, involves transactions between related entities. The violation comes when the value or terms of these transactions is manipulated to lower a tax liability. While the concepts involved may appear complex and removed from ordinary Batswana, some of these practices have become so commonplace that they are no longer thought of as unethical by perpetrators.
March 28 will go down as a day that Batswana will never forget because of the accident that occurred near Mmamatlakala in Limpopo, South Africa. The tragedy affected not only the grieving families but the nation at large. Batswana throughout the process stood behind the grieving families and the governments of Botswana and South Africa need much more than a pat on the back.Last Saturday was a day when family members said their last goodbyes to...