Sars versus taxpayers

EMPLOYEES’ QUESTIONS: MANY PEOPLE EXPERIENCING PROBLEMS

The tax collector answers some questions often posed by frustrated individuals.

An article about the South African Revenue Service (Sars) earlier this month prompted many taxpayers to write in about the problems they have experienced. Moneyweb (MW): Unsophisticated taxpayers have no idea how to deal with additional assessments, or errors made by Sars, or errors they have made on eFiling payments, resulting in penalties and interest. Has Sars considered running webinars explaining these processes?

Sars: Sars is considering tax education webinars.

MW: Will Sars appoint an office to deal with small taxpayers’ problems, or must they go to tax practitioners or tax lawyers?

Sars: Currently, the channels available to taxpayers, including individual taxpayers and small business persons, is the contact centre and branches where tax agents assist the taxpayer.

When it comes to e-Filing, Help-You-e-File is the mechanism to connect them to real-time assistance from a Sars tax agent, while on the mobile Sars application (Sars MobiApp), a call-back function connects them to the Sars contact centre.

Where there is an objection by the taxpayer, these recourse steps (complaints channel, suspension of payment request) are available for Sars to review the assessment.

MW: I recently asked Sars Commissioner Edward Kieswetter what would happen if an employer had not paid over the payas-you-earn (PAYE) tax to Sars. He answered that the employee would never be liable.

But, of course, the employee is liable, and Sars now takes the money from the employee’s bank account. Is Sars going to continue with this practice?

Sars: Sars’ procedure is to obtain evidence in the form of the taxpayer’s/employee’s payslips and bank statements that show the PAYE deduction. Once this is obtained the PAYE credit is granted. Collection is made when the employee has not provided sufficient proof.

In the case where PAYE was withheld by the employer and not paid over to Sars, the employer will be held liable. The employee, however, has to provide the abovementioned evidence when claiming a PAYE credit.

MW: Many taxpayers have written to me saying that they have had the exact same experience as SIP project managers – that is, Sars raising an additional tax assessment, the taxpayer not knowing about this, the taxpayer not being sent letters of demand, the letters of demand not appearing on the eFiling profile.

There is obviously a serious shortcoming within Sars. Does Sars intend to address this in the near future?

Sars: The following principles are applied when issuing correspondence to the public:

Firstly, check if the entity is a registered eFiler and if so issue the correspondence to their respective eFiling profile. If the taxpayer is not an eFiler, the correspondence is issued to the e-mail address associated to that taxpayer. If neither of the above-mentioned exists, the necessary correspondence is issued through the post channel.