LETTER: Boasts about efficiency of Sars systems are hollow

I, like many, have faithfully paid the SA Revenue Service (Sars) my family and business taxes since 1979. Since 1988 I have employed a tax accountant to prepare the various tax returns, including assessed and provisional tax and VAT, just to make sure everything is correct. Over the years I routinely got “flagged for audit” messages, but Sars has never visited me or provided me with any personalised service.

Systematically, my ability to claim expenses has been whittled away and now with the “work from home” policy it is almost impossible to claim home expenses because of the impact of capital gains tax on the portion of the house so used. My accountant says it would take over 50 years to justify the benefit of the claim. I have a detailed electronic logbook for the car, and medical expenses are accurately recorded, so when they call for an audit we simply upload the electronic documents from the cloud.

After the introduction of the automatic exchange of information process I converted my bank accounts to Xero accounting, which automatically posts all transactions that are processed through my personal bank accounts into an income statement and then the balance sheet. Those modernised service providers that send electronic invoices are perfect as these can be automatically uploaded into the cloud to provide documentary evidence of all the transactions. All service providers should be forced to do this by Sars.

What this means is that the accuracy of my accounting should be 100%, except for the strategic game of provisional tax, where if you get it wrong Sars jumps all over you for unintended shortfalls. Trying to get that number to zero should be based on a bonus payment to my accountant. Now there’s a thought!

Sars currently owes me a huge sum of assessed tax, which it acknowledges because it pays interest. Having loaded the assessment at “tools.sars” and a monthly letter asking it to pay me back, all I get is complete silence.

I am sure the vast majority of SA taxpayers are not educated enough to file electronic tax returns, as even my two accountants struggle with my well-organised system. It’s simply too hard.

Commissioner Edward Kieswetter may boast about Sars systems and artificial intelligence, but for someone like me Sars shows no acknowledgment of my being a loyal and honest taxpayer and simply treats us all as criminals and the enemy. Well, I feel the same about Sars.

Andy Clay
Via email

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