The Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA), through all its land, air and sea customs ports, has completed the inspection procedures of more than 39 million tons of goods imported into Saudi Arabia, and more than 36 million tons of exported goods through customs ports. The total value of imported goods exceeded 302 billion riyals and while the value of exported goods exceeded 128 billion riyals.
ZATCA's official figures indicate that the customs ports have completed more than 2.3 million customs transactions including import, export, re-export and transit transactions, in addition to completing the inspection procedures of more than 1.1 million containers.
The analytics also stated that the customs ports completed the procedures of more than one million departing vehicles within the same period, while the incoming vehicles whose procedures were completed are more than 1.1 million vehicles.
The Saudi customs ports recorded during the first half of the year more than 1,000 confiscation cases of many smuggled items, most notably thwarted attempts to smuggle more than 126 million of narcotic pills of different types. In addition, ZATCA thwarted an attempt to smuggle more than 19,000 kilograms of narcotics such as hashish, heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs, which was a joint effort with the relevant authorities. ZATCA also stated through its statistics for the first half that it thwarted attempts to smuggle more than 60,000 bottles of alcohol, and more than 81 thousand liters of alcohol were seized in bulk.
Concerning zakat and tax, ZATCA received, during the same period, more than 580,000 zakat and tax returns from all business sector tax- and zakat payers of the subject to tax regulations, while the oversight and inspection teams carried out 153,000 inspection visits throughout the Kingdom, during which more than 20,000 zakat violations were detected.
More than 9,000 reports were submitted through the ZATCA-approved official reporting channels. The most notable channel was the VAT app and the authority's website (zatca.gov.sa).
ZATCA's figures show that, as a part of its awareness efforts it exerted within the first half of 2021 on ZATCA's regulations and procedures, it provided more than 60 workshops for individuals, interested persons, and the taxpayers from the business sector.
These efforts come at a time when the authority is making a remarkable progress in all its initiatives and operations. Those include its continuous and tireless work towards facilitating the import and export processes and related logistics services, in addition to its continuous endeavor to develop zakat and tax laws to provide exceptional services to taxpayers in top quality to help them fulfill their tax duties.
