A tax audit is an examination of tax returns by any Relevant Tax Authority (RTA) to verify that income and deductions were filed appropriately and to ensure that the tax payer has not under remitted his tax for the period under consideration. In the course of this exercise, the RTA may appoint a Tax Audit Monitoring Agent (TAMA) to assist it in its activities.

Mazars Consulting functions as a TAMA to RTAs and performs the following line-up of activities:

1. Obtain notification for tax audit letters from the RTA. This letter notifies the tax payer of the intention of the tax authority to carry out tax audit exercise for certain period.
2. Serve the tax payer the notification letter alongside the list of relevant documents to be provided during the tax audit exercise.
3. Follow up with the company’s consultant/representative and the RTA regarding the date of commencement of the audit exercise.
4. On the agreed date, the TAMA along with staff of the RTA visits the tax payer’s place of business and examine the relevant documents made available by the tax payer.
5. Necessary extractions relating to the computation of withholding tax is made.
6. A comprehensive tax audit report is prepared using Mazars consulting existing format.
7. The tax audit report (softcopy and hardcopy) is submitted to the RTA.

In a situation where the company’s representative is unable to give a convenient date for assessment to take place due to negligence or an attempt to avoid tax, a Letter of Non-Compliance is served. The issue of a Letter of Non-Compliance to a company means the company will be assessed using Best of Judgement. To do a Best of Judgement report, the following documents are needed:

• The previous demand notice of the company.
• The payroll or audited financial statement of the company.

If the information from these documents is not sufficient, further research about the company can be gotten online.