There were reports that the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA), the body responsible for collecting taxes and other revenue streams for the government in Zimbabwe, had lost tax records dating back 6 years.
The story went, Zimra’s digital repository and server crashed leading to the loss of data. NewsHub who broke the story had sources inside Zimra who thought the crash was a result of the server being hacked or the designer doing a shoddy job.
It appeared this was true because Zimra was indeed requesting information from clients.
Zimra has come out and rubbished all of it. They say there has been no crash or hacking of any of its servers.
Zimra says they are requesting information from clients so that they can update taxpayer records. They remind us that clients sometimes change addresses, emails, public officers etc and that they want to stay abreast of the changes.
Zimra goes further to say they are “working on migrating client data onto their new Tax and Revenue Management System (TaRMS), which will be more efficient and will simplify business processes through the use of automation.”
That’s the official position. You can take that to the bank.
That’s all there is to it, right? Well…
At this point, we have no evidence to contradict what Zimra is saying. However, the tin foil-wearing man in me says there might be fire to this smoke. If it were true would we have been told? If that’s not a resounding yes is it not reasonable to be suspicious?
Are we saying the sources that NewsHub had just wanted to mess with them, fabricating the whole story just to watch the world burn? I don’t know.
This story sounds like the whole Nostro accounts story. The official position there is that the statements that were leaked were fake news but I just can’t shake the feeling that there is more to it than that.
Ignore my ramblings though. Zimra says there was no crash or hacking, that’s that. However, do let us know what you think about all this in the comments section below.-techiizm