Len Walker,
Somerset West
As a tax practitioner and after dozens of years of phone calls (thank goodness it is a toll free number) and waiting in the queue for lengthy periods of time, I eventually managed to navigate my way through the e-filing system as regards individual taxpayers are concerned.
The login procedures for company returns was a lot more complicated. Nobody at the SARS call centre could talk me through the process to access company tax returns.Â
In desperation, I called in a computer specialist and after several hours he detected that there was a fault in the e-filing system, but by clicking here and there he managed to find an alternate way to circumvent the SARS system. Needless to say, I had to write down all the necessary steps but thankfully I managed to open the company tax returns.
On another matter, I have experienced three cases where the amount of the declared interest received by individuals had been increased by SARS (allegedly based on documentation in the hands of SARS) after the returns had been submitted, and in one case the additional interest was in the order of R150 000.
Having raised objections to the additional assessments and having to obtain confirmation letters from the respective financial institutions the necessary adjustments were, however, made to reinstate the original amounts of interest received. The moral of the story is: check your assessments carefully.
