When it comes to tax jargon, most people prefer to bury their heads in the sand instead of trying to understand all the confusing terms that tax practitioners use. Taxpayers just want to do their tax quickly and easily, and if they’re due - receive some money back from SARS. A lot of confusion surrounds the process, but by understanding three simple terms you can make tax season a little bit easier.
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What is an auto-assessment?
This is an automatic assessment issued by SARS to certain taxpayers.
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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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You may be employed by someone, but for one reason or another- you don't receive an IRP5 and no amount of begging or pleading
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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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SARS have recently become a lot stricter about levying administrative penalties. These are penalties for missing the deadline to submit your tax return. You can read about these recent changes in the law here.
If you have outstanding/un-filed tax returns from prior years, chances are high that SARS will have slapped on administrative penalties.
You may have recentl...
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The 2024 filing season opens this year on Monday, 15 July.
Tihs year, the tax season is even shorter than last year (and last year was shorter than the prior year!). This means that SARS are giving you less time to file your tax return.
Important Filing Deadlines
21 October 2024: salaried employees, who earn no other income (i.e non-provisional taxpayers)
20 January 2025: self-emplo...
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In previous years, it was relatively easy to add a company to your eFiling profile, whether it was an Organization or Tax Practitioner profile.
However, since early last year, SARS has changed the procedure. Now, to add a company to your profile, you need to add a registered representative. In order to do this, you must send a request to SARS along with the following documents each time you want to represent a new company:
Received your IRP5 or IT3(a) but unsure what it all means? Here’s a quick introduction to help you understand this tax document.
Your IRP5 starts with your personal details. While these details won’t override what SARS has on record, it’s important to check them and update any outdated information with your employer.
Your ...
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In order to use TaxTim and import your tax certificates directly from your SARS eFiling profile, you will need to be able to login to your SARS profile.
If you do not remember your eFiling username and password, here is a short guide to request it:
1. Go to SARS eFiling and click "Forgot Username".
SARS has reported a rise in eFiling profile hijacking, involving various methods such as altering security details, creating, or modifying taxpayer profiles, and executing SIM swaps.
The hijackers’ objectives are to redirect tax refunds to fraudulent bank accounts, which they are setting up for this purpose. There are certain banks which appear to feature more frequently.
If you are the victim of such profile hacking, you must immediately report this fraud via the
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SARS have recently become a lot stricter with late filers and have changed their rules for administrative penalties. You can read more about these changes here. There used to be some leeway for taxpayers who missed the deadline, but sadly these days are certainly over.
If you received a notification of debt from...
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Please read the steps below to update your contact details on your SARS eFilng profile:
1. Go to www.sarsefiling.co.za
2. Log into your eFiling profile:
3. Click on
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SARS 2024 tax season dates:
The tax season dates are not yet announced. However, based on prior years, they are expected to be the following:
01 July 2024 to 23 October 2024: individual (non-provisional) taxpayers
01 July 2024 to 24 January 2025: provisional taxpayers
If you earn less than R500 000 in a year, and fulfill a series of complicated criteria, you may not have to file a tax return in 2024.
However, we advise you to take GREAT CARE here, and understand your duties properly, because if you don't, you may suffer for it later on....
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SARS has recently issued a new guide with regards to updating your banking details with them. This was done in order to reduce the risk of refunds being paid into the wrong accounts and also to streamline the process, which has tended to be an onerous one in the past.
Change of bank details can be done:
As a nation, South Africa does rather poorly on the savings front. With the majority living near or below the breadline, there’s not much to save when you’re more concerned with just getting through the month. Our high levels of consumer-debt, combined with little in the way of personal savings, means we become financial burdens on the government in the long-run...
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If you left out some documents in your original submission to SARS, don’t panic.
SARS has recently implemented a new process
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In the Capital Gains section of the annual tax return (ITR12), SARS requires you to insert the relevant asset source code for the item you have sold. However, when you sell financial investments (e.g shares) the financial institution issues an IT3(c) which shows the profit/loss source code (i.e4250/4251) and not the asset source code. This causes confusion for taxpayers, who think th...
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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:
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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