Paye deadline looms

Johannesburg - The deadline for employers to submit pay-as-you-earn (Paye) reconciliations to the SA Revenue Service (Sars) for the 2009 tax year is around the corner.

All employers who have deducted tax from their employees during the 2009 tax year (March 1 2008 to February 28 2009) need to complete and submit the reconciliation by no later than May 30 2009.

Employers are prohibited from distributing IRP 5 tax certificates to their employees before their annual reconciliation has been submitted and approved by Sars.

Failing this, Sars will impose a penalty for late submission.

According accounting and management consulting firm Horwath, these are the steps to follow when submitting a reconciliation:

• IRP 5 tax certificates need to be completed for each employee from whom Paye was deducted;
• The total tax deducted as shown on all the IRP 5 certificates must be reconciled to the EMP 201 - the monthly Paye returns submitted to Sars during the year;
• The EMP 201 returns must be reconciled to the monthly payments made to Sars;
• The annual reconciliation (form EMP 701) must be submitted to Sars using its e@syFile 2009 software.

All these documents and the software can either be downloaded from the Sars website or retrieved from eFiling.

Sars has warned employers to back up their 2008 e@syFile data before updating or installing the new 2009 version.

- Fin24.com