SARS continually repeat / publicise their policy regarding admin penalties for late submissions and / or incomplete mandatory information on the Employee’s IRP5. By now Employers will know what these penalties are, so we won’t rehash them here. Details of the penalties as sent in our previous newsletter are still valid so please review if necessary.
Again there were a few issues that certain companies experienced when submitting their interim IRP5’s. SARS did manage to resolve most of these at the eleventh hour, so SARS’s view remains that irrespective of the issues, the deadline date still applied to everyone. There were also a few technical issues around the process of downloading the bulk Tax Reference Numbers prior to this years’ interim submission, but for the most it was a much smoother process than last year. For Employers who were expecting Tax Reference Numbers back for certain Employees but didn’t – we found that in 90% of the cases, the minimum mandatory information was either not supplied or supplied incorrectly. As such we would like to urge clients who are still experiencing issues with these Reference Numbers to check the mandatory information and resubmit to the payroll for when the next Bulk Registration takes place).
There are many Employers expecting to be “unfairly penalised”– but bear in mind that should you have valid reasons for not making the submission deadline or for not supplying the mandatory information for Employees, these can be taken up with SARS and they will be sympathetic, especially if you are able to show them that a serious attempt was made to gather and update Employee mandatory information.
Although the number of tax returns received by SARS this year (via e-filing) was about 23% more than last year there was a marked reduction in Employers submitting their interim IRP5’s this year. This has been a cause for concern for SARS and as such an investigation has been initiated to establish the reasons why.
Watch this space!