It’s that time of the year again and employers are issuing their employees IRP5s for the 2019 tax year. An IRP5 is a tax certificate which shows the total employment income that you earned for the tax year, the total employment related deductions that were taken from your income and paid over to either a retirement fund (pension, provident or retirement annuity fund) or a medical aid and the total tax (PAYE, UIF and SDL) that you paid...
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If you are an Uber driver, you use your own vehicle/s to generate your income and you determine your own working hours, you will be treated as being self-employed (i.e. an independent contractor) for tax purposes.
Since you do not earn a salary, you should be registered as a provisional taxpayer with SARS.
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From our numerous interactions with small business owners, it seems that many draw up the company’s financial statements by themselves, without engaging the services of a professional. Many don’t use accounting software but opt for a simple excel spreadsheet instead. Although this is cost-effective, it can be a daunting task, particularly for those with a sketchy (or non-existent) accounting background.
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Below we take a look at Capital Gains Tax, particularly relating to the primary residence exclusion. What we’ve covered are some of the most pressing questions asked by our users on our help-desk. Take a few minutes to read the Q&As. Hopefully what has been unpacked in these Q&As will benefit and assist you with any uncertainties you might have experienced regarding this topic.
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Flexible employment is becoming increasingly popular, many taxpayers spend some (or all) of their time working from home. If certain conditions are met, taxpayers are allowed to claim a portion of their office running costs as a tax deduction on their tax return. However, please note that SARS usually flags these returns for audit. If you do work from a home, take a read of our home office blog and also check out our handy decision tree to make 100% sure you are claiming this expense correctly.
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Surely most of us love to travel, but traveling for business purposes is no fun when it comes to completing your tax return.
SARS has some rather onerous requirements, but as long as you know what you need, submitting your documents to SARS should be plain sailing.
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It's always wonderful to win a prize or a competition – however, many people don’t realise there may be tax consequences attached.
This week we thought it would be helpful to remind you what to look out for, should you be the lucky recipient of one of the below:
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We receive many relevant questions from our users about what they can claim as a tax deduction if they or one of their dependants suffers from a disability. This week, we will focus on this issue and hopefully help other taxpayers out there who may have the same questions.
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This week we received some questions from our users on retirement fund contributions and the laws that govern it. We hope that this helps you as you start gathering your documents for the new tax season.
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If you own a rental property, then this week’s top questions are specifically for you! Read on to find out more.
1. We paid off our home loan 5 years ago - nil balance due. However, we will have the loan available to borrow from as the term of the loan is not complete (we still have 90 months left).
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We receive many questions to our Helpdesk from taxpayers who are faced with the following scenario:
They work for two employers during the year, perhaps even at the same time and earn income from both. Each employer deducts employee’s tax (PAYE) from the taxpayer’s salary every month and issue them with an IRP5 after year end.
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Read on to see this week’s top five burning questions received to our Helpdesk this past week. Hopefully this helps you too as we once again shed light on some common tax issues.
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In 2017, National Treasury announced that there would be changes to the Foreign Employment income Exemption. These changes were intended to target those South Africans working overseas on expat contracts, who had not formally emigrated and were intending to return ‘home’ to SA at a later stage. The proposed amendments would have seen South Africans working overseas in lo...
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Mr Minister, you did a fine balancing act on this year’s budget; short-term pain for long-term gain.
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Once again we bring you our top five most-asked questions we’ve received to our Helpdesk this past week. Hopefully this may help others who have been puzzling over the same issues.
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Budget 2019: TaxTim’s predictions
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will be in the spotlight next week when he delivers his maiden budget speech on Wednesday, 20 February to the nation.
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We have been contacted by many concerned taxpayers who have received SMS’s from SARS demanding urgent settlement of their tax debt in order to avoid legal action.
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If you run a business or rental property, which is running at a loss, don’t offset this loss against other taxable income you may have when calculating your estimated taxable income for your provisional return.
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The provisional tax return for the 2019 second period, which covers your income from 1 March 2018 to 28 February 2019, is due on Thursday the 28th of February 2019. Try to submit your return and make ...
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Completion Letter
You will receive a Completion Letter if all goes well and SARS is happy with your documents. This means that SARS is not adjusting your Original Assessment and if you have a refund due, it should be paid out in 7 working days (provided you have no tax debt due or outstanding tax returns from prior years). Similarly, if you owe tax to SARS per your Original Assessment, the amount you owe will remain unchanged.
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.
The letter we are referring to here is the generic SARS document request which looks like the below:
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) thanks you for submitting the revised income tax return for the 2018 tax period.
The revised information still does not match the information in the possession of the SARS and/or the income tax return has been identified for verification in terms of the Tax Administration Act....
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