PUBLIC NOTICE:

ESTABLISHMENT OF A LARGE CLIENT OFFICE (LCO)

The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) wishes to advise its valued clients that a Large Client Office was formed as an operations unit on 1^st April 2010 to provide one-stop-shop services to large clients in the administration of Income Tax, Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Value Added Tax (VAT).  The LCO offers specialised service to ZIMRA’s largest clients through increased interaction, consultation and professional advice.

Operational Status

The LCO is a fully-fledged office located at Kurima House on the 4^th floor, West Wing. It is manned by 18 members of staff and currently caters for 503 large companies, with 472 companies falling within Greater Harare and Region 1 while 31 belong to other regions. It provides three major services:

1. Client Services

• Timeliness in processing returns, queries and refunds
• Conduct focused client education and registration
• Prompt delivery of letters and documents to clients
• Automatic issuance of tax clearance certificates

2. Debt Management

This unit gives highest priority to collect tax arrears, negotiate payment arrangements with clients, and follow up on the demand notices issued to clients. It is also responsible for identifying clients who fail to file Income Tax and VAT returns.

3. Compliance

As part of the LCO’s wider service improvement initiatives, audits will be programmed so as to cause minimum inconvenience or disruption to clients and their business programmes. We are also reviewing our case selection methodology in order to ensure equitable treatment for all clients. The creation of such a unit to monitor, audit and enforce collection for the largest clients has yielded significant results in terms of revenue and the level of compliance of this client group has greatly improved.

Selection of clients

The criteria for selection of large clients were based on:

• All companies registered on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange
• Banks and insurance companies in spite of turnover, but excluding insurance brokers
• All mining companies
• Manufacturers of wines and spirits regardless of turnover
• State corporations and large parastatals
• Large contributors in terms of aggregate payments in PAYE, VAT and Income Tax

Office Facilities

There are plans to relocate the Large Client Office to a separate state-of-the-art building where there are no parking challenges. We will advise of further developments in due course.

Commissioner General                                                  Public Notice No. 6 of 2011