SARS - Credit in the Account

[Mike C]

I received a letter from SARS yesterday informing me that the business account is in credit to the tune of about R11,000 due to overpayment of PAYE and SDL from ( ... wait for it ...) 2004!

They now want me to kindly explain (bold and underlined) the reason for the over/additional payments and to submit the relevant documentation in order to validate (bold and underlined) the credit/s.

Proof of payment required is copies of the front and reverse sides of each cheque.

This was way before my time and the staff who dealt with it have long moved on. There might well be records held somewhere else, but my archives only goes back as far as 2006.

Do you think they do this on purpose?

[AndyD]

Your bank might have records in the form of a cheque image but they'll probably charge you more than R11,000 for pulling the archive.

[Mike C]

You are absolutely right AndyD - I am tempted to write to them saying - just keep the money ... but if the situation were reversed do you think that SARS would have waited 8 years before telling me that I had not paid them enough ... PLUS they would charge me penalties and interest. I really don't think that they play fair (that's me being naive again).

[Dave A]

Do you think they do this on purpose?

To give them a chance to repudiate the credit? Absolutely!

I had an assessed tax credit of about R5k for the 1999 tax year (assesed in 2000) related to business mileage on my personal vehicle which, during a review of my tax affairs in 2007, it was established had never been credited to my income tax account. Due to the knock-on effects (really long story), the value of this oversight by SARS was substantially more than the original R5k. The credit was acknowledged by SARS in 2007, but still not credited, and what followed was a running fight that lasted two years. SARS inisted I had to pay what was owed on my income tax account anyway, and they would pass the credit once paid. After two years of this Mexican standoff arguing back and forth, I paid. A week later I got a call from SARS asking for the trip logs and expense vouchers to substantiate the 1999 travel claim.

My copy of the log had died in a hard drive crash. The backup was on stiffies, and I no longer had a pc with a stiffie drive (assuming the stiffies were still in a condition to be readable anyway). The accountant that had done my tax that year had since emigrated to Australia - so no chance of getting copies from him. And I really wasn't in the mood to scratch around my basement on the off-chance I'd be able to find hard copies.

So I did the sensible thing - point out that I'm only obliged to keep those records for 5 years after assessment. Those 5 years were long gone.
So the lass did the sensible thing - recorded that the substantiating documents were not available. The fact that they no longer were legally demandable wasn't mentioned.

In case you're wondering what that means in real life - credit denied.

I really don't think that they play fair

No, they don't.

I wrote it off. I wasn't even aware of it anyway until the review - and frankly it would have all been a lot less hassle (and I would have saved some money) if the damn thing had never come up.

It's kinda like that old joke - If a man says something and there isn't a woman around to hear him, is he still wrong.