The Information Regulator has ordered SARS to release former President Jacob Zuma’s tax records and has eviscerated the agency for its ‘soft approach’ to Zuma’s tax non-compliance.

Seven years after amaBhungane first filed the PAIA request, we may finally see exactly how Zuma skirted his tax obligations, seemingly with SARS’ blessing.

‘The wheels of accountability may grind slowly, but the Information Regulator is demonstrating the benefit of effective mechanisms that prevent state enterprises from weaselling out of their constitutional and legal obligations,’ writes Caroline James on the Daily Maverick.

In February 2019, amaBhungane and Warren Thompson, then a Financial Mail journalist, filed PAIA requests for access to former President Jacob Zuma’s tax records.

‘We believed the records would demonstrate Zuma had not declared all his income to SARS and we had a suspicion SARS was treating Zuma with kid gloves,’ James notes.

On Wednesday, the Information Regulator issued an enforcement notice compelling SARS to disclose all the information requested.

‘The notice and its reasoning is a ringing endorsement of everything we have argued over the past nearly seven years. It is also a stinging rebuke to the manner in which SARS handled Zuma’s continued failure to abide by his tax obligations. After SARS refused those first PAIA applications, we took the fight all the way to the Constitutional Court. In May 2023, the court ruled that the tax legislation and PAIA were unconstitutional to the extent they did not provide for disclosure of taxpayer information if the public interest demanded it,’ she writes.

According to the regulator, Zuma filed his tax returns late every year of his Presidency, he under-declared his taxes in 2017 and 2018, he was criminally charged with making false statements in his returns and failed to show gross income or material facts in his returns.

‘Importantly, the regulator also identified that the information’s disclosure may not only reveal evidence of Zuma’s contravention of the law, it “may well” also reveal evidence of misconduct by SARS,’ she writes in the Daily Maverick.

James notes that the regulator concluded that SARS’ ‘apparent failure’ to enforce tax legislation in respect of Zuma ‘constitutes a failure by SARS to comply with the law’ and said that ‘both legitimate and serious questions can be raised in relation to the manner in which SARS handled Mr Zuma’s tax affairs and repeated transgressions.’

It confirmed the public has an interest in knowing whether SARS is exercising its powers fairly and consistently and whether the President is complying with his own tax obligations. It stressed this is ‘crucial for maintaining trust in public institutions and the rule of law’.

James notes: ‘The regulator accepted that the disclosure of records can infringe a person’s privacy but found that the information we sought was solely “commercial information” and so any incursion into Zuma’s privacy by disclosure was only a narrow one.’

She observes this as a strong endorsement of transparency from the body also tasked with ensuring compliance with Popia. 

James concludes: ‘The regulator has refused to allow SARS to evade responsibility and to weasel out of the obligations imposed on it by the Constitution and the law. It has emphasised that the President … is not above the law and that the public has a particular interest in knowing whether he or she is complying with the law.’

Full Daily Maverick analysis