CAPE TOWN – The SA Revenue Service (Sars) announced this week that employers who do not submit and claim for the first six months – March to August – would forfeit any Employment Tax Incentive credit due to them.
Sars said in a statement on Tuesday that employers who wait to submit during the Annual Reconciliation period would only be able to claim the credit amount for the second six-month period – September to February – but not for the first six month periods.
“Employers are reminded that they have two weeks before the Employer Interim Reconciliation tax period closes on 31 October 2019. The reconciliation period opened on 23 September 2019.
“As with other stakeholders and taxpayers, employers are called to join hands with SARS in building the fiscus for South Africa’s development agenda. For the 2017/2018 fiscal year, PAYE constituted 96.4% of the total Personal Income Tax collected (Reference: SARS’ 2018 Tax Statistics publication, Chapter 1, Table A1.4.2).
“The interim reconciliation period for employers covers the six-months’ transaction period from 1 March to 31 August while the final annual reconciliation is for the full tax year from 1 March to the last day of February, and must be submitted during April and May. This totals two reconciliation declarations that employers are required to make during the year of assessment to ensure that employee IRP5/IT3(a) certificates are accurately issued on time for the personal income tax filing season,” reads the Sars statement.
Filing channels
Sars e@syFile™ Employer is a tailor-made platform designed to help taxpayers who are employers or payroll administrators, to manage their tax affairs. Employers can file via eFiling or e@syFile™. With eFiling, up to 50 IRP5/IT3(a) certificates can be submitted while with e@syFile™ the number is limitless. Branch filing is limited to five certificates only.
Registering employees for income tax
Sars has developed bulk registration solutions on e@syFile™ for employers to register their employees for income tax and automatically obtaining income tax numbers for these employees. This, therefore, does not require the employee to visit a Sars branch to obtain an income tax number.
Meanwhile, Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter on Thursday launched the re-established Large Business Centre at its new premises in Woodmead, Johannesburg. Kieswetter presented the value proposition that the re-established Centre would offer to bring about voluntary compliance among corporate South Africa.
Corporate income tax is the third-largest revenue contributor, having brought in 16.6 percent of the total revenue in the 2018/2019 financial year, according to the Sars statement.