Do Your Tax Return Easily Avoid penalties Maximise your refund
A few years ago, SARS introduced a new section onto the Tax Return called “Unemployed Periods.” Taxpayers are required to complete this section by entering all the times within the tax year they were not working.
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From the 25th October 2019, the printed Tax Clearance Certificate (TCC) will be substituted by the electronic Tax Compliance Status (TCS). This new digital version of the TCC allows for a more secure experience.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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:
When did this happen?
Previously, assuming that SARS did not request any documents for verification and everything for the year was accepted, refunds due were typically paid out quite quickly to taxpayers within 1-2 days.
From 2015, SARS has implemented a new requirement that ALL tax returns, since the first year a taxpayer registered for a tax reference number, must be submitted before any refund is paid out.
...
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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. This year, SARS is re...
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We receive many queries from confused taxpayers who are disappointed to see their tax refunds are smaller than the refund received last year. Often, on the surface, their income and expense situation appears unchanged, so how can this be?
If you are one of these unhappy taxpayers, read on to see some common reasons why your tax refund could be less than last year.
Carried forward retirement contributions
This one is not obvious at all and confuses many taxpayers...
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Do Your Tax Return Easily Avoid penalties Maximise your refund