The deadline for income tax returns was on Thursday moved to December 5, giving taxpayers more time to submit their returns.
This announcement was made by the South African Revenue Service’s commissioner Pravin Gordhan at a media briefing in Randburg.
He said the South African way of leaving things to the last minute was one of the reason for an extension.
Taxpayers were initially given until November 21 to file their returns.
”Given the South African culture of doing things at the last minute, we thought we should be generous to South African citizens and give them extra time,” Gordhan said.
He said taxpayers also deserved the extra time as employers were given an additional two weeks in August this year to meet their Pay as you Earn (Paye) reconciliation obligations.
Misunderstandings regarding the request forms were also taken into consideration when taking the decision.
”A number of taxpayers have realised too late that the Income Tax Return Request (ITRR) form mailed to them in August was a request for a return and not the income tax return itself,” Gordhan said.
While South Africans have a tendency to file their tax returns late, Gordhan acknowledged some people were in a tight spot as they had not received their forms yet due to internal problems they were experiencing with new systems implemented this year.
”If they have difficulties with forms they should come to us for help. They should also understand that when there’s a new system in place, there will be shortcomings. We are not saying everything at Sars is perfect,” Gordhan said.
But this could prove difficult as Sars’ call centre has no capacity to handle the number of calls it receives daily, causing people to wait longer for operators.
”We are experiencing problems … people are waiting longer when calling the call centre because we are set up to receive 11 000 calls and are currently receiving 21 000 calls a day,” said Sars’ chief business development officer Oupa Magashula.
Other problems encountered by Sars since the beginning of the filing season related to e-filers forgetting their passwords.
This, according to Gordhan, further clogged their system as more people were calling for assistance in order to file electronically.
The deadline for electronic submissions remains unchanged and filers have until January 23 to file their returns. – Sapa