Employee on maternity leave and gets only UIF, terminated for tax purposes?

[J7J]

Hi,

If an employee goes on maternity leave and only claims UIF (no salary gets paid), they get terminated for purposes of UIF with a code 9 (Maternity/Adoption) on the UI-19... Does this also count as a termination for tax purposes (ie. if the four months maternity leave fall within the year say 1 April 2012 to 31 July 2012, will they have 2 seperate start dates and end dates for the EMP501?)

[J7J]

Hi,

Spoke to SARS Call Centre. No, the employee is not terminated, but you don't show them as working for those months. Ie. they will be working 8 out of the 12 months, even though they were employed for the full period. So they will be employed say 01/03/2012 to 28/02/2013, but pay periods worked will be 8 out of the 12 pay periods in tax year.

Hope this helps someone else as well :-)

[Dave A]

Hope this helps someone else as well :-)

Too late for me this time around, I guess. With one of my staff who took unpaid maternity leave in the last financial year I issued a separate IT3a for each period of employment.

[J7J]

It is very frustrating that there is no clear set of rules when it comes to these things... Had similar frustration with the ROE - you interpret the rule (and get some advice where you can) and then hope that it is correct...

[Dave A]

Still chuffed you posted the answer you got from SARS. It was a little extra work doing the two certificates, so next time I'll know the "short cut" is OK.

It is very frustrating that there is no clear set of rules when it comes to these things...

+1

In fairness, SARS is getting better at producing user-friendly guides, but it takes time to cover every scenario...

What I don't entirely understand is why SARS hasn't made a total payroll package available for general use. Properly programmed, it would put an end to all the guesswork and hunting down of "rules".

Leaving space for the private sector, I guess