2008 filing season for employers begins

[duncan drennan]

The 2008 tax filing season for employers has begun with a number of changes to the way your returns must be filed.

The deadline for submitting your PAYE reconciliation is 29 August 2008.

This year sees the introduction of the easyFile software for generating your EMP501 return.

More information for employers can be found on SARS 2008 Tax Season website, as well as the easyFile site.

Information for both employers and individuals can be found here.

[Chatmaster]

I attended the easyfile seminar today at SARS. I must say I can not wait to test drive it. SARS really seems to make life a lot easier for us (and them). Easyfile is a very impressive package and seems easy to use.

[Morticia]

2 weeks to go

Time's a-tickin.......only 2 weeks to go until 1 September when your personal tax return will be made available by SARS. Remember, you have to download it yourself from their e-filing site, SARS will not "snailmail" any correspondence as they did in the past.

[Dave A]

I've got to admit, I've been a bit slack on this myself.

I was at a conference all of last week, and one of the things that came up was how important it was to get this return in on time. Penalties for late submission could be 10% of the reconciled amounts paid over for the year.

A fair bit of money just for missing a deadline!

[geraldenek]

Yes, the penalty is really one you should try to avoid.

But still you will get people who realize on the 30th of August that they should start doing something now. I’ve been doing the electronic ones, and I’m glad about this new system, takes a lot of time now, but next year it will be very quick to just punch in all the amounts.

But I've heard the other day that SARS wants to start co-operate with the banks and pension funds, etc. and get all the amounts from them for individuals, and when you receive your return you will only need to sign it in the end.

I think SARS is closing all these loop holes, which is really good for the tax payers who pay all their taxes.

[Morticia]

The harsh penalties suggested by SARS is only in draft proposal format, available for comment, at this stage. But where there is smoke there is fire.......

And yes, the idea is that in the (not so distant) future, SARS will obtain all data from outside agents (banks, licence department, etc) and all such info will already be populated on your tax return once issued, as is the intention this year with IRP5 certificates.

[Dave A]

Wow! has this ever been fun and games.

Being an eFiler for some time, I had noticed you could generate IRP5s via the eFiling system. There's a whole manual as to how it's done. And you are supposed to be able to do the IRP501 recon too.

So I go through the whole process of capturing employees and the financial data for the 2008 year, create the batch and (you'll never guess) there is no way to upload. There's a button in the manual that doesn't exist anymore.

I called every damn help number available and picked every available option for help. The eFiling help number diverts to the SARS help number. Only the PAYE option can help you, according to all the other options I tried, and the PAYE option disconnects the call. All roads lead to *click* and the aural version of the blue screen of death.

I even called the number for registered tax practitioners. Their supervisor will get back to me - at this rate some time after the 2010 World Cup.

Faced with a lack of answers via telephone, I resorted to physical confrontation. I rocked up at Mt. Edgecombe, complete with laptop and V3G (which is really fast in the Mt. Edgecombe area BTW - wish we could get some of that speed in Durban North).

The best guess is eFiling has disabled the option of uploading IRP5s direct in eFiling. So now I'm going through the e@syfile route. Got everything loaded and ready to go now - my recons even balance

So tomorrow we'll see if it uploads via eFiling the way it's supposed to. The dear lady that drew the short straw at Mt. Edgcombe gave pretty specific instructions about how to import the recon via eFiling. But not much else has worked out quite as advertised so I'm not exactly holding my breath

For anyone only tackling this now and not registered on eFiling yet - you're probably going to have to save the data to a disk and hand it in because registering on eFiling can take 48 hours.

Summing up so far, it's not too difficult, a little fiddly and rather tedious. And when you can't get answers - bloody frustrating.

I think the PAYE help desk is either totally overun or all on leave for the rest of this week.

[Chatmaster]

Sounds absolutely fascinating Dave I have been helping my wife the past few weeks with Easyfile. What a wonderful experience if you love torture.

First of all the easyfile system requires Acrobat reader version 8.1 or something to view the certificates. I downloaded 9, still doesn't work. Then it prompted me for a download of a new version, now I can not open it at all. Reinstalled and recaptured all the data and did not update. Now we can do everything except still not view the certificates. If we attempt to upload the data, it tells us that the ref number doesn't exist or we do not have permissions. Our efiling account corelate 100% with the easyfile so no joy there. We are currently running the software on a Vista, Win2000 Pro and XP computer. None of them can view the certificates. Trying to contact the people that presented the training to us is impossible as they disconnected their cell phones and support has no idea what can be wrong. I just loaded a backup onto a CD and my wife will drop it in their laps tomorrow morning. Wasted over R200 worth of phone calls and MANY hours on their crappy system, I think they can do the rest themselves.

[Dave A]

First of all the easyfile system requires Acrobat reader version 8.1 or something to view the certificates. I downloaded 9. Then it prompted me for a download of a new version, now I can not open it at all.

Close anything to do with Adobe and pdf including your browser and then restart the computer.

I had a very similar problem and the restart solved it.

[Chatmaster]

Uninstalled, reinstalled, restart, tried the whole thing over and over again on all the computers, didn't work. I reinstalled the software on my wife's notebook. She will take it to them on Monday so we can get it working, hopefully then the suffering will be over.

[Dave A]

Just a reminder that the deadline is tomorrow...

[Dave A]

Hmmm. Now that was interesting. It all submitted just fine, but there is an interesting twist in this tale.

Somehow e@syfile calculates what your SDL and UIF should be. Now whilst my PAYE recon balanced perfectly, the numbers for SDL and UIF did not!

On one company I'm going to have to chip in R75.00 according to their calculation. Too small for me to worry about why exactly. On another, I'm due a refund of about R600.00!

Wierd.

When it comes to UIF, I've got an idea the differences arise from the UIF ceiling which changes during the year, but obviously I've missed a trick on SDL too and have been gently overpaying.

Next time my auditors come avisiting, I'm going to have to get them to take a closer look at this.

[Morticia]

Extension to employers

Employers and businesses in the country are being granted more time to submit payroll information without suffering penalties, the SA Revenue Service (SARS) announced on Sunday.

"The original deadline for submission was August 29, but the new payroll reconciliation process introduced this year has needed substantial change from businesses," said SARS spokesperson Adrian Lackay in a statement.

Some businesses had asked SARS for more time.

"SARS decided to grant employers more time until 12 September 2008 to submit EMP501 declarations," said Lackay. - Sapa

Any word on provisional tax payments due 30/9/08 - will that deadline be extended as well?

[Morticia]

Add-on to above posting - SARS have confirmed individual tax returns will now only be available from 15 September 2008.

So we all have to wait ANOTHER 2 weeks before we can claim our much awaited and needed refunds...........

[Dave A]

Any word on provisional tax payments due 30/9/08 - will that deadline be extended as well?

The third top-up payment for tax year 2008?