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What is acceptable supporting documentation for SARS?

Posted 21 August 2014

I am self employed, I work as a contractor and I was recently told by my accountant to keep all my slips and I just confirmed with him that all my expenses are on my bank statements, as those are my proof of payments, I also enter the information into Pastel online, that lets me track my personal expenses, because those slips just end up fading, so I throw the slips away.

My accountant said he recently had a client of his audited and SARS didn't accept bank statements as proof, they wanted those little till slips, so now i'm in a complete panic because I have been capturing all my information in Microsoft Money, and now recently in Pastel for years, always thinking that that will be proof enough.

How can they not accept bank statements? Surely if the slip says I spent R5 my bank statement will show the same, how is that not proof? And the records I keep in Money and Pastel, have I just been wasting my time?

So if I am ever audited, my life is probably over because I have over R200K of debt and I could never afford any type of fine as I am barely making ends meet as it is.

TaxTim TaxTim says:
22 August 2014 at 14:45

SARS unfortunately does require and has not kept up with the times whereby slips fade and bank statements and proper audit trails are better evidence than just picking up someone else's slip at a restaurant. If you are audited you can show them your complete evidence trail and appeal any decisions.

Going forward though we suggest scanning documents in and so you have a complete record of them just in case.

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