Debmarine was honoured with four awards by the Namibia Revenue Agency (NamRA) for being the top contributor in Employee tax, Corporate income tax, Value-Added Tax, and overall Domestic Taxes.
This follows Debmarine’s achievement of five awards in various tax categories last year.
First National Bank and B2Gold were also recognised as runner-ups in the overall top contributor in the domestic taxes category.
Meanwhile, Namibia Breweries Limited secured first place in the Customs and Excise category.
B2Gold received additional recognition as the best contributor to Non-Resident Shareholders’ Tax.
The awards were presented at the Tax Appreciation event hosted by NamRA on Wednesday, as part of its anniversary celebration.
Other winners included Shell Namibia Upstream BV for Withholding Tax on Services and Swakop Uranium for being the highest contributor to Withholding Tax on Interest.
Multichoice, Karsten Namibia Agriculture, and Old Mutual Life Assurance Company were acknowledged for Tax on Royalties, Transfer Duties, and Stamp Duties, respectively.
NamRA Commissioner Sam Shivute at the event said: “We host these awards not to celebrate or recognise ourselves as NamRA, but to appreciate compliant taxpayers and encourage them and others to honour their civil duty of fairly contributing to tax. This is the third time we are hosting this event.”
Shivute attributed the growth to minimised revenue leakages, stating, “We realised that there was a list of people who were claiming refunds for as long as 10 years which are not rightfully theirs. Thus, through our renewed collection strategy, which is only 15% implemented, we started recouping such funds and we shall continue doing so through notice to agents at the banks.”
Shivute also mentioned that the targets set by the Finance and Public Enterprises Minister Iipumbu Shiimi, have been a driving factor for NamRA to outperform.
“Since inception, we have achieved a growth of N$24 billion in our collection, reflecting in our first year of operations, where we collected N$49 billion compared to N$86 billion in 2023/23 as we turn three years in operations. We shall continue to grow as attested to by the above. The Minister set a target of N$51 billion which we surpassed to N$53 billion, and in 2023/24 we collected a total of N$86 billion, of which N$10 billion was paid as a refund. We still beat the target which was at N$71 billion, and this time Shiimi upped it to N$85 billion, and we promise to deliver on it,”
Meanwhile, Head of Domestic Taxes Idi Itope, revealed that 235,505 taxpayers owe NamRA a combined total of N$79 billion as of the end of March this year, comprised of N$17 billion capital tax, N$13 billion in interest, and N$49 billion in penalties.
To further strengthen NamRA’s collection efforts, the Commissioner mentioned that the Agency managed to get Tax Inspectors Without Borders to capacitate the state agency through a sponsorship from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Shivute issued a warning to non-compliant taxpayers, stating, “Our warning now goes to those who are not compliant and have been submitting zero returns while making billions of dollars that we are coming for you as well.”
