Penalty for late submission of EMP501 Feb & Income tax numbers now mandatory for submission

**Christel** · 17-Mar-21, 06:07 PM

Just a heads up... SARS will be raising a 1% penalty on the total PAYE on the emp501 for all late submissions of EMP501's for the 202102 period.
Deadline for submissions are 31 May 2021.

Also, IT numbers MUST be submitted for all certificates on Easyfile...There has been much discussion about the Tax Ref Numbers being mandatory (which has been the case for a few years now), but SARS did not always enforce this. The actual validation that the number is present seems to have been a bit "loose", and in fact where there were missing numbers, SARS actually auto created these numbers in previous years. They also made available the ITREG facility to assist with the registration process. The discussion / noise has been around certificates being rejected if there is no Tax Ref Number present - we are just checking up again to understand what the intention is - if e@syfile does reject certificates that don't have the Tax Ref Number on them, then there will be some problems that employers will face. . With SARS needing to tighten up on compliance checking this coming year my guess is that they will have to validate properly and reject if the number is not present. We have requested an official view / response - will let you all know.

**Dave A** · 18-Mar-21, 07:11 AM

Is e@syFile all set up so we can do our EMP501 return now already?

**Mike C** · 18-Mar-21, 08:21 AM

I think that the submission season only starts next month.

**Christel** · 19-Mar-21, 06:11 AM

Submissions only to be made from 1 April. SARS still needs to update E@syfile... should you submit now, you will get errors. So rather wait. At least filing season opens on 1 April and not like previous years only in the middle of the month.