Tax Season 2020 – SMS or SOS?

SARS’s new auto-assessment – what to do when you receive an SMS

With SARS’s introduction of their auto-assessment tax filing procedure, many tax-payers will have already received an SMS informing them of the result of their tax assessment. The calculation will be made from information derived from your IRP5 and information submitted to SARS by your bank, medical aid scheme and retirement annuity provider.

Please contact your tax practitioner if you have received a notification via SMS

Although the intention is to streamline and fast-track SARS digital procedures, we strongly encourage our clients to use caution when accepting the auto-assessment figures. The South African Institute of Tax Practitioners has too, recommended that auto-assessments not be accepted unless the taxpayer or their tax practitioner understands and agrees with the outcome and can reconcile every entry.

What to expect:

1. You will receive an SMS from SARS advising you of the outcome of your tax return.
2. The SMS will prompt you to log in to your account and accept or edit the assessment. (We hold most of your eFiling profiles and will need to complete this step for you)
3. You will be directed to a summary of the assessment outlining income, deductions, allowances, and payments.
4. Consider the following carefully before accepting:

• • Does it include the correct deductions?
  • How many IRP5s have been submitted for you and are they correctly reflecting your income and deductions?
  • Any allowances or deductions that were not submitted by the 3rd parties mentioned above will have to be manually populated in the return and submitted to SARS. For example, a claim against your travel allowance or employer-provided vehicle will not reflect in this pre-populated return and will need to be filled in on the return that will be submitted to SARS.

If you are not in agreement with the assessment or if you feel that SARS may not have all the correct information or might be missing tax certificates or documentation, we suggest that you click on edit return and get in touch with your Hobbs Sinclair Tax Practitioner.

You have not been auto-assessed

The initial phased filing season required that taxpayers who had not been auto-assessed would fall into the fourth and final phase of the filing season. However, based on many requests made, SARS has updated its systems to allow taxpayers to request and file tax returns before 1 September 2020, irrespective of whether or not they have received an ‘auto-assessments’.

You haven’t received an SMS?

If you are a regular taxpayer and are concerned because you have not received an SMS from SARS, no need to worry, just contact your tax practitioner who can follow up and check your tax status.