Despite the dire economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the government maintains to honour financial obligations towards its creditors, suppliers, and employees as well as statutory obligations including payment of tax refunds. This was made clear by Finance Minister Ipumbu Shiimi on Thursday while responding to questions in the National Assembly on why his ministry has not yet paid refunds on some taxpayers' returns. He said the statement by Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) parliamentarian Jan van Wyk, that the government is broke and that is why some tax returns have not been paid yet is incorrect. Shiimi acknowledged that the government is experiencing challenges of reduced expenditure at a time of great need to increase expenditure to stimulate economic recovery and cater for unexpected expenditure induced by the outbreak of COVID-19. He said 1 065 020 returns have been issued to taxpayers for filing obligations between April 2018 to March 2020 of these, 205 364 have been assessed, 195 052 are in progress and 664 604 are still outstanding. Shiimi explained that for the tax returns that are in-progress, assessment processes have already started but have not been completed due to various reasons which include pending supporting documents, cases flagged for audits, audits underway and cases being revised. He further explained that the process is also delayed by some taxpayers not understanding well the new requirements introduced under the new integrated Tax Administration system. He noted that during the period of 01 April 2020 to 12 February 2021, tax refunds amounting to N.dollar 384 877 for income tax and N$6,912 million for Value Added Tax (VAT) have been paid during the current financial. “The ministry of finance has been paying tax refunds weekly and will continue to do so. I would also like to make use of this opportunity to call upon taxpayers with outstanding tax refunds to approach their respective tax offices in order to iron out any impediment that may have caused the delay in processing the refunds,” Shiimi said. The finance minister further urged taxpayers to submit their tax returns and update their tax accounts online in order to accelerate processing assessments and refund claims.