Publications
Partners
Cape Town - The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has dismissed complaints from taxpayers that it is not paying out refunds on the 2014 tax season which are below R10 000.
Although Fin24 had received a number of complaints from taxpayers who had lodged tax returns reporting that they had been told that they would not be paid the refunds if they were relatively small, SARS deputy spokesperson Marika Muller said: “As regards the idea that SARS does not pay refunds below R10 000, that is entirely incorrect. It is not, and never has been, SARS practice.”
Muller said that in terms of the time taken for processing refunds, SARS could report that 98% of refunds were paid within 72 hours of submission of the tax returns. “For the 2013 tax season, that number was 95%. So the vast majority of taxpayers who are due refunds receive them very quickly.”
Muller explained that SARS had to be extremely careful to combat “any attempts” at defrauding the system. “This means that if the details provided in a tax return (which generate a possible refund) are flagged by SARS’s systems, they will need to be checked more closely.”
Acknowledging that not every case identified for checks was attempted fraud, she said SARS would be failing in its mandate if it did not “run those checks”.
In a media statement SARS, reporting on the 2014 tax season, said 94.49% of eligible taxpayers submitted returns on time – an increase from 91.53% in 2013. A total of 5.32 million returns were submitted by the deadline of November 21, 2014.
An astonishing 94.88% of returns were assessed within three seconds.
One unhappy taxpayer said in a letter to Fin24 that SARS had taken “a huge step backwards” in the 2014 season after convincing many taxpayers to do their annual assessment “quick and clean through e-filing… what we appreciated were the quick refunds of amounts due to us”.
“This year things changed very much… I know of many taxpayers that, after months, have still not received their refunds from SARS.”
“When you call they tell you that it (your assessment) is in financial review … and (the claim) will take 60 days… but that was as long ago as September 2014 and still no refunds.”
Another claimant said that he had got a refund from SARS “but it was quickly reversed” from his account. When he queried it, he was told that further assessment needed to be carried out. He has, however, now been paid out a refund again.
When Fin24 put the first example to SARS, it was sorted out in a matter of days and the claimant received about a R30 000 refund. He was effusive in his praise of SARS.
