Updated Admin Penalties for Personal Income Tax
SARS has issued an alert stating that a once-off penalty will be imposed for late submission of Personal Income Tax returns where a taxpayer responded to an auto assessment after SARS has issued an original assessment based on an estimate.
SARS is using data collected from third party data providers such as employers, financial institutions, medical schemes, retirement annuity fund administrators and other data providers to generate tax assessments automatically, without any input from the taxpayer.
It is however important for taxpayers to ensure that all intended information does pull through on the assessment and that the information has been recorded correctly.
Some income, such as rental income, would not have been automatically included. These types of income will have to be manually inserted on the tax return.
A notice would appear on the taxpayer’s Efiling home page if the taxpayer has been auto-assessed. The notice would indicate that the taxpayer has been auto-assessed and would request the taxpayer to either accept or decline the assessment. If the taxpayer chooses to decline the auto-assessment, the Income Tax Return would have to be completed as per normal.
If the taxpayer accept the proposed auto-assessment, SARS will automatically submit the tax return on the taxpayer’s behalf, and issue a notice of assessment (ITA34) without the taxpayer having to submit a tax return. No further input would be required from the taxpayer’s side.
It is however important to note that the tax return will not be filed until the taxpayer has accepted the auto-assessment.
SARS has issued an alert stating that a once-off penalty will be imposed for late submission of Personal Income Tax returns where a taxpayer responded to an auto assessment after SARS has issued an original assessment based on an estimate.
It follows that where a taxpayer does not accept the auto assessment, the return would not be automatically assessed and would still reflect as outstanding, resulting in the taxpayer being regarded as non-complaint. In these cases a once-off penalty could be imposed by SARS.
An external guide on how to dispute administrative penalties via Efiling is available here, should a taxpayer wish to dispute such a once-off penalty.
28/09/2021
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