Small -to -medium-sized businesses in Swaziland pay higher taxes than businesses in neighboring South Africa, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, according to a report in Times of Swaziland.
Unlike most other countries, which have a different tax rate for small and large enterprises, Swaziland’s small and medium enterprises are taxed 27.5 percent – equal to its large corporate and multinational companies, the report said.
By comparison, South Africa taxes SMEs between zero percent and 10 percent, depending on the annual turnover. Lesotho’s SMEs are taxed at 15 percent and Zimbabwe’s SMEs are not taxed at all.
“It does not make any business sense for SMEs to pay the same tax rates as big companies because (that) increases the cost of production,” said Hezekiel Mabuza, vice president of the Federation of the Swaziland Business Community. The Swaziland government must benchmark the SME tax rate to neighboring countries’ so that its SMEs can be competitive, he said.
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