The provisional tax return for the 2019 second period, which covers your income from 1 March 2018 to 28 February 2019, is due on Thursday the 28th of February 2019. Try to submit your return and make the payment before 12pm on the 28th of February 2019 to ensure it reaches SARS on time.
If your payment is made after the due date, SARS will automatically charge a 10% penalty, even it is only a day late! Thereafter, interest on the unpaid amount will be levied at 10% annually. To calculate the interest due, multiply the unpaid amount (i.e tax plus 10% penalty) by 10% and then pro-rata for the number of days it is late. You can do this by working out the number of days it is late and divide by 365.
Firstly, check if you sent SARS as much detail for each claim as possible. If you did, check your email because it is likely that SARS has emailed you with a letter requesting specific documents. You will not see this letter on eFiling. If you are unsure or can’t find the email call their call centre on 0800 00 7277.
If they still can’t help you, send a schedule of your expenses, proof of the expense and a proof of your payment of each expense that you claimed for. It is best that when SARS requests documents from you, that you send them as much to support your claim as possible as they generally disallow a claim for as little as a schedule being missing.
Should the payment have been made less than 7 days ago, you can call your bank and ask them to reverse it. If you made the payment more than 7 days ago, you can send the SARS accounts department a letter requesting them to refund the overpayment to you. Remember to attach the proof of the payment as well.
You can drop the letter and proof of payment at SARS or email it to them. SARS should get back to you within 21 business days. If you do not hear from them after 21 business days, you can either draw a statement of your tax account on eFiling or call the call centre to see if anything has been done yet.
How to draw a statement of your account on eFiling:
Log into your eFiling profile, click on “Returns”, click on “SARS Correspondence”, click on “Request Historic IT Notices”, select the “I want to request a Statement of Account” and then click on “Next”. At the following page you should select the “6 months to date” option and then click on “Request”.
As a sole-proprietor, SARS needs you to report all your income but also let them know about your business expenses too, as this will allow you to show SARS why you suffered a loss during a tax year.
To do this, you need to complete details of your business’s income and expenses in the Local Business section of your Tax return (ITR12). First, enter your gross / total income in the “Turnover” section. Next, you need to list each expense such as travel, accounting fees, admin fees, depreciation, telephone etc and add any other expenses which are not listed under the “Other” section. The system will automatically calculate the loss you made.
Lastly, you need to enter the source code for the industry that your business falls under and this will ensure that SARS carries over the loss you incurred to the next tax year/s where it will be off-set against any future profits you may make from the same trade. A list of profit and loss source codes can be found here by clicking the hyperlink.
