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Getting Started with DigiTax in Zambia

Overview of how to get started with DigiTax. You'll be up and running in a jiffy!

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What is DigiTax?

DigiTax is a ZRA-licenced smart invoice solutions provider authorized to provide tax
compliance software

ZRA stands for Zambia Revenue Authority

DigiTax Platform, powered by Namiri Technologies Ltd, is a suite of solutions:

  • DigiTax App (Mobile PWA),
  • DigiTax Dashboard (Web Browser-based Desktop application) and
  • DigiTax API

The first two are powered by the DigiTax API 🎉

Tax in Zambia

ZRA, Zambia Revenue Authority, is an agency of the government of Zambia that is responsible for the assessment, collection and accounting for all revenues that are due to the government in accordance with the laws of Zambia.

There are several tax types:

Systems concerning certain tax types have been introduced and have evolved over the years.

The use an Electronic Fiscal Device (EFD) was mandated by the EFD Law which was passed through Act Number 17 of 2015. It has been mandatory for taxpayers registered for 2 of the taxes above (VAT and IPL) to procure, install and use an EFD.

Smart Invoice

More recently, ZRA launched Smart Invoice. Under the new provision, it is mandatory for a taxable supplier to use an electronic invoicing system to record each sale or transaction. Electronic Fiscal Devices have been phased out following the introduction of the electronic invoicing system (Smart Invoice).

Moreover, the EFD implementation only covered Value Added Tax (VAT) and Insurance Premium Levy (IPL) while Smart Invoice will cover more types of taxes or levies such as:

  • VAT
  • Turnover Tax
  • Rental Income
  • IPL
  • Tourism Levy and
  • Local Excise Duty on Electric Energy

The Smart Invoice will also have a component that will provide for stock management. Smart Invoice is here to help more taxpayers become compliant (removing the need for having physical gadgets, the EFDs).

📘

Smart Invoice is software based while EFDs was device-based

The implementation of EFDs was mainly based on physical gadgets (devices) while Smart Invoice will be software based.

Once on-boarded to Smart Invoice, you get to leverage the technological convenience this software solution provides.

Enter DigiTax

DigiTax is your digital solution for effective, simple and painless Smart invoice tax compliance. Our suite of software products enable businesses to transmit smart invoices directly to tax authority in real-time.

DigiTax is a solution that sits between you, a taxpayer, and ZRA's smart invoice system.

There are four Smart Invoice solutions with varied Eligibility requirements listed on ZRA's website here.

The fourth one, Certified Invoicing Systems involves an integration which is achieved through an interface with the Virtual Sales Data Controller (VSDC) which is a bridge between the Certified Invoicing System (CIS) and the ZRA Smart Invoice System.

However, instead of onboarding directly onto the ZRA Smart Invoice System, a process that requires significant resource investment, both time and technical resources, we do the heavy lifting for you - Making tax compliance less taxing.

👍

The DigiTax Platform does the heavy lifting for you - Making tax compliance less taxing!

The DigiTax Platform, we have developed a suite of solutions:

  • DigiTax App (Mobile PWA)
  • DigiTax Dashboard (Web Browser-based Desktop application for e-invoicing) and
  • DigiTax API (for system-to-system integration without the issue of platform hopping).

Here, at the DigiTax API hub, we cover guides, recipes and API reference to get you ready to integrate with the DigiTax API. Consider reviewing the digitax.tech webpage for more on the DigiTax Dashboard and DigiTax app.

What can DigiTax help me with?

Our DigiTax Dashboard and DigiTax app use the DigiTax API in the background. The API is designed to optimize smart invoicing, tracking purchases and inventory management among other ZRA Smart Invoice functionalities in the following ways:

  • Asynchronous functionality that automatically retries ZRA Smart Invoice System (or any other tax agency system).
    This mitigates against duplication of invoices and associated tax obligations
  • Guarantee that the same invoice won't be submitted more than once
  • Recording of purchases in addition to sales to ensure all ZRA Smart Invoice-related data is accessible in a single place
  • Throttling between your business' throughput and ZRA Smart Invoice System.
    A business only needs to send an invoice once, and DigiTax will process the information thereafter based on ZRA Smart Invoice System capacity at that particular point in time
  • Real-time notifications
  • Priority support
  • Simple integration.
    We’ve streamlined integration reducing the work required by 70%. To start with you can interact with the API endpoints here
  • Code samples in 19 different integration programming languages to choose from when using the interactive API reference. This reduces the likelihood of errors during the development workflow
  • 99.99% uptime
  • Queuing and scaling (allowing us to support any amount of volume)
  • Get notifications on transaction statuses via Callback URLs
  • Intuitive DigiTax dashboard for you and your stakeholders
    It serves for redundancy and e-invoicing

Guaranteed safety and integrity

We comply with best industry and security practices.

👍

DigiTax is built with the best industry practices and to the highest security standards

Overall

The DigiTax App and Dashboard users securely sign up and log in via social media credentials (Google and Microsoft) or email address, one-time pin/password, and secure email links.

The dashboard is where you sign up and set up profiles and businesses outrightly as a product user or before integration.

All activity is logged for audit trail and compliance checks and all information is encrypted and transmitted for
maximum protection

API

The API is built with various industry standards for API platforms in mind, but some of the most common ones include:

  1. RESTful API
  2. OpenAPI (formerly Swagger): An open-source standard that allows a standardised way to generate, document, and test our APIs.
  3. Secure authentication with cryptographically signed JWTs (JSON Web Tokens)

Updated 4 months ago