Want to win R10,000 in cash just for filling your Individual (ITR12) tax return for the 2019 tax year?
How to enter:
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Exempt or non-taxable income refers to certain types of income, which is not subject to income tax.
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This is a common area of concern for many taxpayers who don’t know why they are asked to submit documents to SARS after they file their tax return.
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Hundreds of thousands of South Africans are filing their annual tax returns and everyday people ask us “when will I get my refund from SARS?”.
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With the first provisional return still fresh in the minds of taxpayers, we thought it would be a good time to highlight some questions that were asked to our Helpdesk last month.
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We’ve recently received many questions from taxpayers asking us if we physically went into a SARS office to submit their returns manually.
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When a Tax Return is filed usually SARS issues an immediate assessment (ITA34), however sometimes they do need to do a further manual check on their side.
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You have filed all your outstanding tax returns with SARS and when receiving your ITA34 assessment/ Statement of Account/ Penalty statement you notice that you owe SARS some tax. There are three main options available to you, if you want to make a payment to SARS.
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We are seeing many cases where taxpayers submit their documents to SARS, wait 21 working days (sometimes longer) only to receive a second letter on eFiling which requests the exact same documents again.
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Taking a closer look at why taxpayers may be required to pay in tax on pensions or annuities on assessment and how they can avoid a repetition of this each year.
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On 20 June 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) of the sixth parliament, and for the first time in years, we witnessed an uninterrupted SONA. And that is not the only first. For the first time, the SONA cost almost R2m, a staggering 47% lower than the cost of SONA 2018 and the lowest in five years.
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You may have heard the recent announcement from SARS that certain taxpayers who earn less than R500 000 per year don’t need to submit a tax return. However, this only applies under very specific conditions so it is extremely important to understand these fully if you think you may be affected. You can read all about this rule here.
This year SARS are taking things one step further. They ...
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At TaxTim we receive many questions from taxpayers who pay medical aid for dependent family members and who want to know if they can claim for this in their tax return.
When paying medical aid contributions for a ‘financial dependent’ the medical scheme fees tax credit applies in respect of fees paid by the person to a medical scheme. This means that the person who is paying the medical aid will receive the medical tax credits, and not the dependent/member of the medical aid.
Who is a ‘dependent’?...
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Too often, taxpayers rush when completing their tax return, and then they miss out on some expenses they are eligible to claim. Don’t overpay tax by overlooking these seven common tax breaks.
Contributions towards a Retirement Annuity
Your contributions towards retirement funds are deductible for tax up to a limit of 27,5% of the greater of your taxable income or remuneration (to a maximum of R350,000 per year). This limit applies to the total contributions you make to any Pension, Provident or Retirement Annuity (RA) fund during the year...
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TaxTim is seeing cases where taxpayers who had already submitted their documents in early July to SARS are, around ten days to two weeks later, receiving a further two letters from SARS requesting documents again. The one letter is the generic letter with the long list of documents, which was originally issued, while the second, contains a more specific request relating to the taxpayer’s tax return.
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Usually SARS issued an immediate assessment, however sometimes they do need to do a further manual check on their side. Often the reason for this is one of the following:
TaxTim and SARS use all the financial information you provide to work out the most accurate estimate of your potential refund (or tax liability) for the current tax season. However, there may be some information we don’t have access to, or information from prior years we don’t know about, that won’t be included in the estimate of your tax refund or tax liability.
Just like the SARS eFiling tax calculator, TaxTim doesn’t take into account provisional tax payments, unpaid penalties, carry-over amounts from previous years and assessed losses...
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By now you would have seen the latest announcement by the SARS commissioner to increase the qualifying threshold for certain taxpayers to submit a tax return from R350 000 to R500 000. Along with this news, came some changes to the tax season filing dates and deadlines.
Our help desk has been received many queries about these changes. Since the start of tax season is just around the corner, we...
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Our helpdesk receives hundreds of questions from commission earners about how their tax is calculated. Many are also confused about which expenses they can claim. Hopefully our FAQ will help other taxpayers who might be puzzling over the same issues.
1. I have a salary and earn a small commission; can I claim for my travel to and from work every day? (The commission is based on the sales that my team makes telephonically per month).
Should the commiss...
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You may have seen the latest announcement by the SARS commissioner to increase the qualifying threshold for certain taxpayers to submit a tax return from R350 000 to R500 000.
However as with all previous years, this only applies to certain taxpayers and so it is very important to check if you are one of these.
The threshold applies to you only if you meet ALL of the criteria below:
There are times when the call centre agent from SARS is unable to resolve your issue and you need to reach out to a more senior person at SARS.
You can request to speak to a team leader / operations manager or the branch / call centre manager and they should be able to assist you. Always remember to note down the case number for your call. If however, you're not satisfied with the outcome of the issue, you can lodge a formal complaint with an agent at a SARS branch or on eFiling (if y...
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This week we zoom into Wear and Tear also commonly known as Depreciation. Below we've covered some of the top questions we've received from our Helpdesk. Take a quick read through our Q&As and see how your pressing depreciation questions can potentially be solved.
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