Namibia's Inland Revenue has established a transfer pricing unit. "We will be asking you for transfer pricing supporting documents soon," said Acting Commissioner for Inland Revenue, Justus Mwafongwe, at the recent annual tax symposium hosted by the PwC's Namibia Business School.

Mwafongwe confirmed that the draft amendment bills to the Income Tax Act, Value-added Tax (VAT) Act and Transfer Duty Act have been finalised and would be introduced during the current session of the National Assembly. Some of the expected tax amendments include lowering of the company income tax rate to 32 percent, increase in the VAT registration threshold from N$200 000 to N$500 000, provisions on voluntary VAT registration, including the proposal that voluntary registration will only be allowed for businesses with turnovers in excess of N$200 000 and inclusion of share transfers relating to immovable property in the transfer duty net.

Speaking at the same event was Stanley Gurirab, Acting Deputy Director for Trade Facilitation at Customs and Excise, who said there is a new drive by the customs administration to accredit clearing agents, which will address current problematic border declarations and correct reporting of import VAT and customs duties due by importers.

Gurirab said new rules will require clearing agents to apply for renewal of licences at least 30 days before August 01, 2015. He further said going forward, clearing agents will be subjected to stricter control and punitive measures for incorrect declarations done on behalf of their principals.

Goods will not be cleared unless written instructions by importers to its clearing agents have been attached for each consignment. This will to a large extent address the current situation where agents use incorrect import VAT account numbers to clear consignments. Mwafongwe also elaborated on the newly established Large Taxpayers Office, which in spite of staff capacity challenges managed to improve and streamline tax compliance of companies with an annual turnover exceeding N$75 million.

The PwC Tax Symposium 2015 was hosted by the PwC Business School. The session included in-depth tax training and updates on income tax, employee tax and VAT and concluded with a Thought Leadership Tax Update breakfast session.

"The symposium was attended by finance and tax administration personnel from several companies representing inter alia banking, insurance, agriculture, energy and manufacturing sectors. A total of 150 participants benefitted from the training and tax updates and are now better equipped to deal with important tax compliance issues," noted Chantell Husselmann, Director, PwC Business School.