Lucky Montana's R15 million tax battle with Sars heats up

IOL News

2 days ago

Prasa's former chief executive Lucky Montana is facing a R15 million tax bill from the SA Revenue Service.
Image: File
uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) MP and former Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) chief executive Lucky Montana faces a tax bill of over R15 million by the SA Revenue Service (Sars).
Sars has also launched proceedings to have him sequestrated. The tax collection entity applied to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria last month to strike out several allegations made by Montana.
According to Sars, allegations in about seven paragraphs were identified as objectionable matter.
A defiant Montana on Saturday said the battle is far from over and is likely to end in the Constitutional Court.
"On July 21, I filed an application in the high court to rescind the original default judgement obtained by Sars in 2022, without my knowledge.
"This led us to the current situation. In addition, we have taken the decision to appeal the recent judgment. This is but one battle in a much broader legal fight. Until these two matters are finalised by the courts, the battle is not over," Montana explained.
In his replying affidavit, Montana accused Sars of arrogant conduct that disregards legitimate objections and denies him constitutional rights to administrative justice and fairness.
Judge Etienne Labuschagne found the allegations to be irrelevant and vexatious.
Montana also accused Sars of maladministration and abuse of power and of indulging in a witch hunt against him, motivated by a political agenda.
In addition, he contended that Sars persisted in pursuing false claims that he bought properties to the value of R36m in order to 'nail' him.
He alleged that Sars was part of a dirty campaign of an unidentified Johannesburg firm of attorneys to target persons like him by pursuing false allegations.
Other allegations include Sars breaking into his house and acting like a criminal gang.
Judge Labuschagne said all these allegations are scandalous and vexatious and were also not relevant.
In its response to Montana, Sars argued that it is prejudiced by such allegations and that not only are the allegations scandalous, vexatious or irrelevant, but the entity has no right to respond.
Additionally, it faces institutional reputational harm, to the detriment of the tax administration scheme in South Africa if such allegations are not struck out.
Sars succeeded in having the allegations struck out, with Judge Labuschagne also awarding the revenue service costs of the strike application out are to be paid on a punitive scale of attorney and client, including the costs of two counsels, where so employed.
"I am satisfied that Sars has established a right to strike out the above material identified in its strike out notice.
"The allegations are emotive and intemperate, unsupported by facts and constitute gratuitous abuse. They are irrelevant to the issue of whether this court should condone the late filing of an answering affidavit," the judge found.
He said while the court is mindful not to stifle robust debate such allegations fall to be deprecated as irrelevant, unhelpful and calculated to harm and that such conduct warrants a punitive cost order.
The judge added that Montana's answering affidavit was due in the sequestration proceedings on April 26 last year but since then, he has failed to file it or to indicate in papers when it would be filed.