This, however, has been fully addressed now. For filers requiring help while completing their tax returns, the Help-You-eFile service, allows individuals to be in direct contact with a SARS Call Centre agent while they complete their tax return online. With permission from the taxpayer, the facility enables a call centre agent to access the taxpayer's eFiling browsing session at the same time as the taxpayer and to see exactly what the taxpayer is seeing.
When clicking on the Help-You-eFile icon on their eFiling profile, a taxpayer will be prompted to accept the Terms and Conditions. They will then receive a Help-You-eFile session reference number on their eFiling profile.
The taxpayer will then need to call the SARS contact centre on 00 , quoting their reference number to the call centre agent who responds. To date, however, there are no sufficient statistics on whether older or younger people use this facility.
They'd like their hand to be held and so we've now got the Help-You-eFile and it's essentially a hand holding exercise in a very secure fashion," says Kingon. I would have expected more but we are in a low season but we will pick up when we get to 23 November - the deadline for electronic submissions.
Introduced in September, the App allows taxpayers to complete and submit their tax returns, a first for revenue authorities on the continent. Once registered, users can then eFile from their mobile device or tablet. For Apple devices, users can visit the App store. And to be sure of the quality of technologies SARS puts out there, Kingon says pilots of all technologies were run before going live.
With all the amazing technology that is designed to essentially make the filing of tax returns easier, the gap for those who are not tax compliant is getting smaller by the year. However, Kingon says the challenge of compliance still remains. Compliance continues to be a challenge to us; however, due to our processes, there are far less places to hide today.
We can generally close the doors and see who is non-compliant, so we are able at a far better way of getting the crooks out there to make sure they comply. However, there are people that still want to play the system and this was evident in plain fraud cases where people wrongfully claim deductions; or cases of sophisticated tax schemes, where it becomes more a question of tax avoidance where people interpret the law to suit their point of view.
Only between 2 and 3 of these high-net worth individuals have declared this income to SARS," noted the report. In the Tax Statistics Report, it was revealed that the tax register for individuals surged From October , the revenue service introduced a permanent voluntary disclosure programme VDP.
The previous VDP -- which aimed to encourage tax defaulters to disclose their tax defaults, resulting in them receiving relief from penalties -- ran from November to October Follow polityZA. Close Search Polity. All these words. Any of these words. This exact phrase.
In the article. Headings only. In the first paragraph. Sort By Change Sort Order Publication date latest first Publication date earliest first Headline alphabetical Author alphabetical. Advanced Search. There are no physical branches open for in person public engagement. For at least the next 6 weeks, as we find ourselves in the cauldron of the third wave, all engagements with taxpayers will be through our on line digital offerings.
More about this later. A year ago, when we launched tax filing season, we were deep into an unprecedented, first wave of the COVID pandemic. The pandemic had thrusted all of us into an evolving new way, which challenged us to adjust, adapt and be agile. SARS has stepped up and used this crisis to accelerate our own modernisation journey. Today, on Day since the initial Lockdown, the third wave is proving to be more devastating on lives and livelihoods.
The delta corona virus variant appear to be significantly more transmissible than its predecessors, suggesting that South Africa will experience the worst of the three peaks. We find ourselves in a quite different world than a year ago.
To all those infected and affected, including our own colleagues at SARS, I want to express our heartfelt compassion and condolences. Most of us are affected, so from our personal experience we can say that we are with you on this journey of heartache and grief. This past Sunday President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would enter stage 4 lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the corona virus. It is important that we protect ourselves and each other. Taking the challenging context into account, SARS continue to render an essential service as defined in the Disaster Management Act, to serve its mandate to collect all revenues due, ensure optimal compliance with tax and customs legislation, and facilitate legitimate trade as well as to protect the domestic economy and society.
If ever there was a time for us to step up and demonstrate our Higher Purpose, that time is now! Collectively, we will ensure that the tax administration system of our Republic continues to remain accessible to allow taxpayers to fulfil their obligations and to ensure the tax revenues due, are collected.
I take this opportunity to honour the many frontline workers in health, security, retail, hospitality, and other essential services who have, and continue to put themselves at risk daily to care for, and save lives, and support livelihoods. We also remember those who in this service, have succumbed.
Included in this are many of our own staff within SARS. You are fondly remembered for your selfless service and ultimate sacrifice. The economy has just begun to show encouraging signs of recovery after the initial impact of the pandemic, but we have quite a way to go before we return to the pre-COVID levels. I would now like to focus on the upcoming tax filing season. Earlier I had mentioned that our branches will be closed for at least the next 6 weeks for in-person visits.
We are launching a completely virtual tax filing season today. Allow me to share with you how this has been made possible as I also share with you important details of this tax filing season. We are very aware, that for millions of individual taxpayers, this is not merely about submitting their income tax returns.
It is the expectation of a tax refund. Indeed, we respect that for many, especially during such stressful times, the payment of refunds is a lifeline. Last year we paid out R When we announced our 5 year strategy in , we set out a clear strategic intent to follow an approach of Voluntary Compliance.
This approach is based on our belief that most taxpayers are honest and simply want to fulfil their tax obligations with the least effort and cost. The safety of our own employees as well as that of taxpayers is a high priority throughout the design of the tax filing season. It is possible because of our single-minded commitment to our strategic intent of voluntary compliance as framed in the 9 strategic objectives. Allow me to take you through each.
SARS has dedicated 24x7x digital self-help channels where we have further enhanced our current channels and added additional channels:. As a last resort, we will provide assistance at our branches once physical visits resume on an appointment basis, whilst taking care to observe social distancing, hygiene and related protocols that ensures the safety of our staff as well as taxpayers — we really want to discourage taxpayers from arriving without an appointment since we want to avoid the indignity of long queues, as well as the risk of exposure to infection.
Provide coaching to facilitate and assist taxpayers to convert from manual filing to our on line digital platform. We have made a number of helpful enhancements to our e-Filing platform and Mobi-App feature. Once branch visits resume, we will also first attempt to covert taxpayers to our digital offerings with the help of our frontline staff. Offering an auto-assessment to more than 3 million taxpayers. This means for these taxpayers, we will present an assessment outcome based on the information we already have access to.
These taxpayers may accept the SARS assessment or edit their returns should they have additional information to supplement their declaration. Home office expenses, SARS will issue a statement later today to remind taxpayers to carefully consider claims for work from home expenses.
It is important to note that the law has not changed. We want to caution taxpayers to correctly and truthfully complete their returns as this behaviour will be detected.
Specifically we have enabled remote virtual agents in our service channels of Branches and Contact Centre. SARS embarked on a recruitment drive in order to replace critical skills of which are earmarked for graduates that we lost over the years.
To date we can confirm that of these positions are close to finalization and are in the various stages of our appointment process.
The next cohort of graduates will be onboarded in November Internally, SARS has reskilled service agents to become proficient in more compliance related activities, such as verifications and audits. Freeman Nomvalo, have agreed to establish a mutually beneficial partnership to build capability in SARS.
A statement will be issued today. By yesterday 8 registrations had been captured. Still, SARS must encourage taxpayers to submit their returns early as there is slightly more than a month left before the Filing Season deadline of 14 July To date a total of more than returns were received by SARS from branch offices around the country and through efiling. This year SARS issued more than 3,4 million returns to individuals and have received back more than one sixth of returns issued.
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