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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During the tax year, SARS issued SMS's to taxpayer whom they chose to auto-assess.
Those selected individuals would typically be taxpayers earning fixed salaries without additional allowances. If they did have medical aid and retirement annuity fund contributions, these details would have already been sent to SARS by their service providers, and SARS should have automatically included them in the assessment.
We've received many questions on our help desk where users say that t...
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If your 2023 individual income tax return was auto-assessed by SARS earlier this year, and you intended to include extra income or expenses/ deductions but missed the deadline, don't be dismayed, there might still be a way to fix things!
Is SARS rejecting your tax return submission and your dispute too?
Have you requested an extension, but SARS granted it for a day before they replied to you? i.e, you asked for an extension till 10 November 2023, but SARS gave you an extension...
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It seems that dormant companies are on SARS' radar.
If you registered a company with CIPC some time ago and forgot about it, that company could land you in hot water with SARS. Read more to find out what the financial repercussions could be and why you should get a hold on the situation.
A dormant company is classified as a company that has not actively traded for the full year of assessment. Because there is no activity in the compan...
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With the end of the tax year looming, SARS tax collectors are on high alert to collect taxes and meet their revenue targets.
If you owe SARS, you should be receiving constant reminders to pay your debt. This may be in the form of SMS's, phone calls or even posted letters.
If the debt is unfamiliar or if you are not in agreement with the debt, you can File a dispute with SARS , howe...
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SARS have recently introduced a new way to track your tax return online via the SARS website.
See TaxTim's step-by-step guide to help you nagivate this new process:
1. Please go to the SARS website www.sars.gov.za click on "Contact Us"
2. Scroll down the page then click o...
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After you have submitted your supporting documents to SARS, they have 21 working days to review them, assuming all sufficient documents have been received. Once their review is complete, you will either:
Additional Documents Request
If SARS still requires for documents from you, they will either send ...
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Step 1:
If you have been auto-assessed by SARS, you may see the screen below when you log into SARS eFiling.
Please click on "View".
You may also see this screen:
If you ...
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We are starting to see some common trends whereby taxpayers’ expenses are disallowed because the documents submitted are falling short of SARS’s requirements. To avoid unnecessary frustration and time wasted in raising disputes, read on to see if any of these areas apply to you.
Travel deduction
In prior years, the submission of a logbook detailing your business mileage used to be sufficient to justify your travel claim. In recent years howev...
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What is an auto-assessment?
This is an automatic assessment issued by SARS to certain taxpayers.
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The 2023 filing season opens this year at 8pm on Friday, 7 July. The countdown's on, it's almost here!
It is important to be aware that the season is shorter than prior years. This means that SARS are giving you less time to file your return.
Important Filing Deadlines
23 October 2023: non-provisional taxpayer (i.e. salaried employees)
24 January 2024: provisional taxpayer (i.e self-employed, rental earners, freelancers, ...
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Last year, we noticed that many taxpayers filed their tax returns before the tax season officially began (i.e July). However, doing so caused delays and problems with their tax refunds.
There are only three specific instances where you can file your tax return (ITR12) directly on eFiling before tax season starts:
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 that won’t be included in the estimate of your tax refund or tax liability.
Information from previous tax seasons
Just like the SARS eFiling tax calculator, TaxTim doesn’t take into account provisional tax ...
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As part of SARS’ mission to simplify the eFiling system, the Tax Type Transfer process was updated in 2020 for all Tax products in a bid to offer users complete control of their eFiling profiles.
Overall, you can expect to see the following key changes introduced to eFiling from the end of April 2021:
You’ve been diligent with your tax obligations, you’ve paid your PAYE (employees tax) each month without fail, you’ve kept all the supporting documents for your deduction claims and you’ve carefully filled out your tax return, making sure you’ve put all the right amounts in all the right places, against all the right codes. (Pssst, if you used TaxTim to help you complete your tax return, you wouldn’t have had to worry about all the right places and codes because that’s all automated for you)...
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SARS has given you just 40 working days to submit your tax return. If you received your auto-assessment at the beginning of July, your time to submit has already expired. Auto-assessments issued on 4 July 2022, expired on 30 August 2022. Count your work days carefully. SARS is applying this rule very strictly. If you do nothing, your auto-assessment will very soon become FINAL.
For more on auto-assessments and their deadlines, please read Read more →
Filing a tax return for the first time can be a daunting task. To get you started, we’ve gone back to the basics
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If you received another email from TaxTim requesting SARS supporting documents, but you already sent these to SARS more than 21 business days ago, one of these four scenarios might be the reason you are still waiting:
Scenario 1:
You submitted the documents directly on SARS eFiling yourself, but you did not inform TaxTim. In this case, our system needs to be updated to reflect that you already submitted your documents.
Please log into your TaxTim profi...
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The South African Revenue Service (SARS) says it will implement an "online traveller declaration system" that will go into effect on November 1, 2022. According to SARS, the new system will be applicable to all South Africans travelling abroad and says that it will simplify passenger movement at South African airports.
According to SARS, the system's goal is to collect travel information and in exchange, grant a traveller pass via email. It requires that all South Africans and residen...
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Step 1:
Log into your SARS eFiling pofile.
Step 2:
Navigate to your Tax Return which was auto-assessed.
You can do this by clicking "Returns" (top menu), then "Returns History" (side menu), then "Personal Income Tax ITR12" , then select the the relevant ITR12.
You will see the
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From 1 July to 4 July, SARS aims to issue auto-assessments to taxpayers who are due a refund.
The rest will be issued in batches up to 24 July.
Timing is Everything
If you receive an auto-assessment, you will have just 40 working days to request a tax return on TaxTim (or eFiling), complete and submit it. If you take no action within the ...
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The 2022 filing season opens on 1 July. Tick tock. That’s just around the corner.
It is important to be aware that the season is shorter than prior years. This means that SARS are giving you less time to file your return.
Important Filing Deadlines
24 October 2022: non-provisional taxpayer (i.e. salaried employees)
23 January 2023: provisional taxpayer (i.e self-employed, rental earners, freelancers, etc)
Auto-Assess...
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SARS is warning that those who fail to submit their tax return on time, will face harsh penalties. The period of leeway which applied to 2021 has now passed.
SARS announced a change to their legislation in December 2021 whereby they would levy administrative penalties to taxpayers who missed the filing deadline for one or more tax returns. Prior to this change, taxpayers only paid penalties when two or more returns were outstanding.
As a...
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In order to complete the Medical section of your annual tax return, you will need a tax certificate from your medical scheme (if you contributed to a medical scheme that is!).
This certificate details exactly how much was paid to the medical aid for yourself and your dependents over the course of the tax year (1 March to end Feb). It also details how much money you paid for other medical expenses, such as medicines and doctors expenses, which you claimed for, but your medical aid did NOT cover...
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