I know I am banging on a bit about SARS and tax at the moment but it is probably because for me it is the period when we have the most interaction with SARS – not only are we in the throes of the 2010 filing season but the 2011 first provisional tax deadline is also around the corner. In this context I recently had the misfortune of having to go into the SARS Cape Town branch to take in an application to register a new tax payer for...

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion around provisional tax this year and more importantly who is liable to submit a return. SARS have adopted a new approach and are not automatically sending out returns any more and are rather leaving it up to tax payers to request the forms from SARS. In spite of this we have still received almost 70 emails notifying tax payers that they are liable to submit a provisional tax return – and the...

I had to make a trip to SARS in Cape Town this am to hand in the 6 paper provisional tax returns that I cant get on efiling – this is despite several email and telephonic requests to SARS to get them on e-filing. As I arrived there I was greeted by the site in the picture below… this is a many-hour queue (and it has been like this since November last year according to the SARS lady that helped me). Fortunately, I did not have to...