Publications
Partners
Charné is a Registered Tax Practitioner and has written several magazine articles with financial related themes since 2006. She is a known finance and tax expert working as an adviser at lemons into lemonade financial planners cc.
1. Make sure whether you have a tax number
Many individual tax payers are automatically registered by their employers when they start earning a salary. First check with your employer if you have a tax number otherwise, contact the SARS (South African Revenue Service) Call Centre.
SARS will only give you the tax number if you can verify yourself as the tax payer and if not, you may need to visit a SARS branch. Your tax number is a 10-digit number. It should appear on the IRP5 that you get each year from your employer to show what you earned in the last tax year.
If you do not have a tax number and are not sure if you need one, then you must contact SARS or a Tax Practitioner to check whether you should register.
2. If you have a tax number, make sure all your SARS records are in order
When you obtain your tax number, whether from your employer or directly from SARS, you still need to check with SARS of the following three things :
• Know from which tax year you are registered from. A tax year starts on 1 March in one year and ends on 28 February the next year. At the moment, returns are being handed in by individuals for the 2016 tax year.
This is the tax year ending on 29 February 2016 and the return must be submitted by 25 November 2016.
• Check if you are behind on any returns. SARS may not require you to submit a return for some tax years. If you changed jobs in any particular tax year, you will have to submit a return for that year.
• Check if you owe SARS anything. Request a statement from SARS or on eFiling to confirm what you owe SARS or that you do not owe them anything.
3. Check whether you need to submit a tax return
Not everyone needs to submit a tax return. Here are a few current rules from SARS where it is not necessary to submit a return for a particular tax year :
• you worked for one employer in the tax year; and
• your gross income (salary before deductions) were below R350,000 in that tax year; and
• you did not have any other allowances from your employer; and
• you are not claiming any medical aid or retirement annuity contributions against your salary; and
• you earned interest but below R23,800 per tax year if you are below 65 years and not more than R34,500 interest per tax year if you are 65 years and older.
Any time you earn any other income than normal salary or, any time you earn a salary from more than one employer in one tax year, you need to submit a return. Examples of “other income” include :
• freelance income or you have your own business;
• travel or other allowances from your employer;
• capital gain income for example when you cashed in on your unit trust investment;
• dividends you earned on unit trust and other share investments;
• rental income; and
• interest that you earned on investments above a certain amount.
My advice? Hand in a tax return when you have a tax number, even if no taxes are due to SARS for that tax year. It can get confusing to keep track of which year you needed to hand in a return and which year not.
SARS can also ask for a previous tax return at any time and you may not be able to find your tax documents for that year easily. Knowing that your tax records are always up to date will put your mind at ease.
Read more:
