Pretoria - Two days to collect almost R42bn.
Johan Troskie, who heads the tax division at audit firm Mazars, said there is concern that the South African Revenue Service (SARS) won’t be able to pull it off.
On Tuesday the tax office announced that it needed to collect this amount before the end of the week to achieve its tax revenue target of R672.2bn. Thursday is the end of the 2010 tax year.
The outstanding amount represents 6.25% of the total tax revenue that needs to be collected.
In his February budget Finance Minister
Pravin Gordhan pointed out the improvement in tax revenue in 2010 compared with the 2009 situation.
The revenue target for the 2010/11 tax year had been adjusted 12% upward from R648bn.
SARS spokesperson Adrian Lackay said the outstanding revenue that still needed to be collected was not out of line with previous years.
SARS expects to receive R27bn on the last day – principally VAT payments and provisional tax payments by companies with March or September year-ends.
Ernest Mazansky, tax director at legal firm Werksmans, said a problem that has been building up for a few years is that the tax office has been collecting its taxes earlier and earlier. One day the flow will dry up, he said, and there will be “no more juice to squeeze out of the lemon”. The country will then sit with a massive deficit.
Mazansky says one of the ways in which taxes are being collected earlier is with the second provisional tax payment.
This payment (which now has to be made by the end of March) has to be 90% exact or penalties and interest will be levied on the outstanding amount.
Mazansky said he could see a situation unfolding in which payments on a revised assessment had to be made immediately.
In the past a taxpayer had at least 30 days to pay. These days they have to pay “right now”.
Sars has asked companies that have to pay by March 31 to ensure that they do so in good time.
Cheques should be made out to “South African Revenue Service” and not to Sars. Cheques made out to Sars (or Said in Afrikaans) will be returned with resultant fines being imposed, as well as interest for late payment.
Cheques for more than R5m will not be accepted.
Cheques submitted to Sars’s offices must be there by 15:00 on March 31 or they cannot be banked that day.
The money has to be in Sars’s account on March 31 if it is not to be regarded as a late payment.
- Sake24
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