Late payment - according to SARS

[dellatjie]

Dave, I have been succesful in applying for waiving of penalties and interest by going into the payment history on efiling, and proving that the request date was on time.

[Christel]

Yes, we object all the time and almost every-time they waiver the penalties & interest.

[Richard S]

Five or six years ago when I still paid by cheque SARS penalised me for a late payment. I showed them the two cheques for the two cc's and explained that they were both in the same envelope, but one had been stamped received on Friday the 6th and the other on Monday the 9th. I explained that the cheques were dropped into the postbox at SARS on the evening of the Thursday the 5th. They were not interested in the slightest. Arguing the point over the course of the following month was a complete waste of time and effort and eventually I simply had to pay the penalty plus interest.

[Dave A]

An update.

I applied for a tax clearance certificate for the company concerned, and it was rejected due to the unpaid penalties and interest issue arising from this "late payment received" problem. So this morning I shot out to SARS to tackle the issue.

As everyone has indicated above, just show proof of (timeous) payment and request a waiver of the penalties and interest, and SARS is quite accommodating. However, it can take up to 7 days to get finalised - so if you're in this boat, don't leave it until you need a tax clearance certificate tomorrow (like I did). Fortunately I could get reprints of the current certificate which is still valid, much to the relief of the lass who was assisting me.

The urgency to resolve the issue though did lead to the manager coming through to assist - and they're pretty keen that I follow up with Standard Bank as to why it took 7 days to get the payment through to SARS.

Like myself, the manager is also concerned that it might have been a My Bills system problem that caused the delay, the consequences of which would apparently not be trivial. However, as far as he is aware, I am the first person to report and prove having had the problem.

Time to stir the pot with my bank manager, methinks.

If you know anyone who paid their EMP201 for the period 201408 via the Standard Bank My Bills system (particularly if it was released on 5th September), you might suggest they request an EMPSA via eFiling to ensure payment is reported and captured timeously on the SARS side.

[Dave A]

An update on this seems long overdue

As everyone has indicated above, just show proof of (timeous) payment and request a waiver of the penalties and interest, and SARS is quite accommodating. However, it can take up to 7 days to get finalised

Famous last words. As it turned out - I was being wildly optimistic.

My first application for waiver of penalties and interest was rejected "for lack of proof of payment". Specifically, a copy of the bank statement showing the transaction in question is not deemed a "proof of payment" as this does not prove that payment was made timeously.

I take it time travel has been discovered then - I just missed the news flash.

I was invited to resubmit an application with acceptable proof of timeous payment, plus I was also required to obtain a written explanation from Standard Bank as to why the funds were not paid over to SARS until 7 days later, and submit that letter with my application too.

(And when it came to time to submit, I kid you not - they were ticking off the requirements:
Letter from Standard Bank - check!)

As you might imagine, getting this letter from Standard Bank proved... Well, it took some persistence.
And when I did eventually get it, the letter stated plainly - their investigation showed that SARS received the funds on the same day it left our account, being 5th September 2014.

When I got it, I felt like the ant between two elephants. I knew SARS was certain that they only got the funds on the 12th. Now Standard Bank was certain SARS had got the funds on the 5th. How the heck was I supposed to break the looming deadlock?

So I asked Standard Bank for some supporting evidence.

What I got was a trail of email correspondence with logs that pretty much proved the case -
The money had transferred on time.
For some (pretty technical and documented) reason, SARS had only updated their records a week later.
The fault lay either with SARS, or something called ecentric.

A slam dunk you'd think.

Nope! SARS decides they'll waive the penalty, but not the interest!



For the most part I'm pretty good about keeping my cool, but it was damn tempting to appeal on principle.
But for R38 in interest?

In the end I've just paid the interst. Obviously SARS needs it more than I do.