THE NEW PENALTIES BECOME EFFECTIVE FROM 21ST NOVEMBER 2009

You may not all be aware that a media release was published by both SARS and SAICA in regard to additional time for tax returns and how they intend to implement the new penalty regime.


For the 2009 season SARS have granted additional time for all provisional taxpayers including individuals and trusts who are provisional taxpayers who are in good standing with SARS. These categories of taxpayer now have until 28th February 2010 to submit their tax returns.


Good standing with SARS, means previous year’s tax returns must not be outstanding.


This is welcome relief for many Tax Practitioners as it was quite clear that they were not going to hit the 20th November deadline in regard to individuals.


In so far as your individual taxpayers are concerned it is now imperative that you determine which taxpayers are outstanding from 2008 or earlier and you deal with this category of taxpayers now, because with the effect from 21st November SARS is going to apply their penalty regime ranging from R250 for taxpayers with an annual taxable income of up to R250 000 and R16 000 per month for a taxpayer where taxable income is over R50 million.


SARS after 21st November will advise those taxpayers in writing or electronically if penalties are going to be charged. If a taxpayer fails to submit a tax return within 30 days, a second penalty will be charged in the second month and so on until the return is submitted.


In order to facilitate the management and control of this, it is important that tax practitioners get the management ledger up to date and produce a list of outstanding taxpayers. In order to help you facilitate this, we have devised a user report which will allow you to produce a list of each taxpayer that is outstanding and each year outstanding. We will advise when this has been posted on the support web site.

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