Storm brews as Zimra raids doctors’ accounts

Vusumuzi Dube and Munyaradzi Musiiwa Sunday News Reporters
THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) and medical practitioners are headed for a collision course with reports that the former is garnishing the latter’s bank accounts for income tax payments that they are owed by PSMAS despite the medical aid society failing to pay them in three years. Investigations by this publication revealed that medical practitioners operating private surgeries and hospitals in Bulawayo, Gweru and Masvingo had their accounts garnished by Zimra without prior warning.

The revenue collector also came hard on doctors for alleged under-declaring incomes after they failed to declare incomes that include the money that was owed by PSMAS.
A practitioner who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of victimisation said he was owed over $500 000 by PSMAS dating back to 2013 but Zimra had already garnished 25 percent income tax and fined the practitioner 50 percent for under-declaring income when he did not include the money owed to them by PSMAS as income.

The practitioner said Zimra was not taking into cognisance that PSMAS has not been remitting money for services offered to their clients in 2015 and owed many medical practitioners since 2013.

“What happens is that we send invoices to our respective clients for the medical bills. These include medical aid societies that we do business with. The money that we claim is not always the money we get from these medical practitioners because of the conditionalities attached to their medial aids. In some instances we get far much less than the money we claim.

The money that we get from these medical aid societies are revealed to us in form of remittance advice, which is a document that shows the actual money that you are going to receive and the form of treatments that are covered by their respective medical aids. Zimra does not work with figures on remittance advices but the claim forms where we claim more than what we get. We then lose much,” said the practitioner.

Another practitioner who also spoke on condition of anonymity alleged that Zimra was not considering the fact that Government at some point was withholding PSMAS money from civil servants on condition that they put their house in order.

“If we give services to patients who pay through medical aids, we are supposed to receive our payments within 60 days. PSMAS has gone for three years now without remitting money to us. This has been worsened by Government which at some point was withholding its money paid by civil servants. Now most medical practitioners are shunning civil servants because if they offer their services to them they will not receive their payments yet Zimra garnishes the money from our accounts and goes on to fine us for under-declaring income despite that we did not receive the payments. We are left with no option but to turn Government employees away because we are losing on both ends,” said the practitioner.

Efforts to get a comment from Zimra spokesperson, Mr Taungana Ndoro were fruitless as he initially requested questions in writing and later his mobile phone went unanswered.
However, a Zimra official alleged that doctors were not the only ones being affected by the garnish order as Zimra was stepping up its revenue collection bid. He added that doctors were defaulting paying tax.

“We are targeting everyone who is defaulting in their payment of income tax. Our investigations revealed that there are a number of individuals who are defaulting in paying what they are meant to be paying hence when we garnish they now feel we are being unjust but the truth of the matter is that they were the ones who were defaulting. As for the doctors we discovered that a majority of them are hiding behind the PSMAS tag but the truth of the matter is that they have been defaulting,” said the official.

Zimra recently raided medical practitioners who operate surgeries and private hospitals in Gweru and Masvingo and demanded their invoices before garnishing money from their respective accounts.

Last year PSMAS members were informed that they will have to fork out cash to receive treatment after the society instructed service providers to demand cash upfront. PSMAS said the move was aimed at preventing its debt to health service providers from ballooning and to avoid further litigation.