SARS E-Filing 2019/20

alphabyte said:
Presumably ( I am not an expert) "unemployed" means that you were not drawing a salary, hence there is no IRP5 for that period. If you are running a business and are registered as an employee of that business, then there must be an IRP5 which SARS must correlate with your information. If you are not employed, your income must be declared as business income, either by the business (if it is registered with SARS), otherwise in your name.
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That would make sense, but they do ask you in a separate question whether or not you received any income on an IRP5, so I don't think it's for that reason. My guess is that it's one of those leading questions they ask so they can turn around say "Look! You claimed you were unemployed, and yet we see you a lot of money went into your bank account". Who knows, but from what I know about tax, your employment status makes absolutely no difference to the amount of tax you pay on any income earned throughout the year. If you earned say, R500k for the year, you are going to pay the exact same amount of tax whether you were employed for 9 months of the year or 12 months. What would make a difference is how much PAYE an employer would have had to deduct. So every month your employer deducts PAYE from your salary on the assumption that you would have worked for the full 12 months. If you only worked 9 months of the year for your employer then they would have deducted too much tax, assuming you didn't earn any other income for the other 3 months. But at the end of the day you will still be assessed on the correct amount of tax and SARS will refund you the difference.
 
deweyzeph said:
Anyone know what the point of the question ""Were you unemployed for any period during this year of assessment?" is? As far as I know it makes no difference to the amount of tax you pay whether you were unemployed or not for part of the year.
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If you were not employed for the full year you get taxes differently. You income and deduction must be adjusted to equivalent of a tax year. Anyway; it is an advanceor intermediate tax knowledgeIt does make a difference
 
Got this EE:

Please be aware that SARS has notified us that they are experiencing technical issues surrounding the pre-populating of client IT3S tax information on their eFiling system.

If you have logged into the eFiling system to submit your income tax return, you might have noticed that there is incomplete or missing IT3S information on the site.

Their technicians are currently working on addressing the issue/s. As soon as they have informed us that the issue has been resolved, we will let you know.

In the meantime, we suggest that you hang ten until they have rectified the issue. Remember, online filing will start from 1 September 2020. For more information on the 2020 Filing Season, please visit the SARS website

So that answers the question I had surrounding the incorrect information displayed on my assessment.
 
deweyzeph said:
Anyone know what the point of the question ""Were you unemployed for any period during this year of assessment?" is? As far as I know it makes no difference to the amount of tax you pay whether you were unemployed or not for part of the year.
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As I understand it, you are taxed on your income for the year. Your monthly tax is calculated as if you were going to earn that same amount for the entire year.

For a general example: (please note these rates are for example only.)

Your earn R10,000pm and get taxed R500pm. Your employers are deducting this tax presuming that you are earning that same amount for 12 months. So the tax is worked out on the annual R120,000 income amount, in this case, 5% of that, which is R6000 for the year/ R500pm.

However, if you only work for the first 7 months, your income for the year would only be R70,000, but you would've been over taxed, as your overall tax rate should be lower, for example 3%. (The more your earn, the more the tax rate goes up).

So now you would have paid R3,500 total tax at 5% for the year, where you should have only paid R2100 for the year. (3% of your annual income)

So hence, you would be over taxed and should receive a rebate.

This is also why if you earn two incomes from different employers, but each is only taxed on their separate amounts, you'll end up owing SARS money as your collective tax amount would attract a higher tax percentage than the separate percentages you paid on each.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but that's the real basics of how I understand it. It is probably a lot more involved than that.
 
GSRit01 said:
As I understand it, you are taxed on your income for the year. Your monthly tax is calculated as if you were going to earn that same amount for the entire year.

For a general example: (please note these rates are for example only.)

Your earn R10,000pm and get taxed R500pm. Your employers are deducting this tax presuming that you are earning that same amount for 12 months. So the tax is worked out on the annual R120,000 income amount, in this case, 5% of that, which is R6000 for the year/ R500pm.

However, if you only work for the first 7 months, your income for the year would only be R70,000, but you would've been over taxed, as your overall tax rate should be lower, for example 3%. (The more your earn, the more the tax rate goes up).

So now you would have paid R3,500 total tax at 5% for the year, where you should have only paid R2100 for the year. (3% of your annual income)

So hence, you would be over taxed and should receive a rebate.

This is also why if you earn two incomes from different employers, but each is only taxed on their separate amounts, you'll end up owing SARS money as your collective tax amount would attract a higher tax percentage than the separate percentages you paid on each.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but that's the real basics of how I understand it. It is probably a lot more involved than that.
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I understand what you're saying, but SARS can work that all out automatically without knowing if you were unemployed or not during the year. They just simply look at the combination of PAYE deducted on your IRP5's, compare it to how much should have been deducted when you add up all the income together and then either refund you the difference if you paid too much tax, or you have to pay in extra if you paid too little tax. The amount of tax you pay on any given amount of income is fixed as per the PAYE tables.

Whether you earned R500k in 1 month and then took off the rest of the year, or you earned R500k over 12 months, you are still going to pay the same amount of tax regardless at the end of your assessment.
 
deweyzeph said:
I understand what you're saying, but SARS can work that all out automatically without knowing if you were unemployed or not during the year. They just simply look at the combination of PAYE deducted on your IRP5's, compare it to how much should have been deducted when you add up all the income together and then either refund you the difference if you paid too much tax, or you have to pay in extra if you paid too little tax. The amount of tax you pay on any given amount of income is fixed as per the PAYE tables.

Whether you earned R500k in 1 month and then took off the rest of the year, or you earned R500k over 12 months, you are still going to pay the same amount of tax regardless at the end of your assessment.
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I guess they just want to make sure. Some employers get the IRP5 very wrong. So it's basically confirmation from your side.
 
sdenobrega said:
Anyone get an update on completion letter for verification?
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Nope. I submitted 31 July, asked for verification of 1 small amount, sent it in immediately. Nothing since. Meanwhile other people have had to hand in numerous documents and been sorted in a week. Doesn't make sense.

Radioboy said:
Nope.

I submitted on the 1st of Aug.
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Ditto. Frustrating.
 
All I did was update my bank details and sent them the proof. 2 weeks later still nothing.
 
Finally!!
They finished with verification.
Nice refund. Opens Porsche website.
 
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I came across this one just now. So, if rental property is in my name, this needs to be declared in both our returns? All interest earned as well? This is very strange and I never knew this.

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13. Not doubling up if you are married in community of property.
If you are married in community of property, all interest earned, capital gain and losses, rental income for properties should be declared on both spouses’ returns with the combined total amount. The Sars system will calculate the split, says Snyman, assuming you have indicated to Sars that you are married in CoP.
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surface said:
I came across this one just now. So, if rental property is in my name, this needs to be declared in both our returns? All interest earned as well? This is very strange and I never knew this.

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Only if you are married in community of property. Most income from investments (like interest, CGT etc) and rental income need to be declared in full on both spouses returns.
 
If in theory, one is able to max out RA contribution of 350K , what is the maximum tax refund one can get from SARS? I mean it could be different max for different tax brackets but is there a Cap mentioned somewhere?

Or is it as simple as gross income - RA = taxable income.
 
Submitted my return last week. No uploading of any documents needed (first time ever). Unfortunately no money coming back to me (also first time ever :crying: ) but fortunately don't owe them anything too.
 
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