Sars, you, and those auto-assessments
It starts with ‘auto-submission’ – Sars filing your return for you – and is only a provisional assessment that you are free to disagree with.
This article discusses the practical considerations around the much-heralded auto-assessment, the latest offering towards easing the tax compliance burden to come from the South African Revenue Service (Sars).
Read: Auto-assessments for individual taxpayers kick off
Taxpayers are cautioned to take a step back, and properly check the third party data used by Sars before they accept the assessment.
‘Auto-assessment’ is a misnomer
Tax practitioner and founder of Think-Tax Gauteng, Johan Heydenrych, is of the view that the term ‘auto-assessment’ is a misnomer, and that the process is better described as the “auto-preparation of the income tax return based on the third party supplied information”.
Heydenrych notes that the term ‘auto-assessment’ has unnecessarily created anxiety in many taxpayers since it creates an impression that the assessment has already been issued.
He also says that it is not a new type of tax assessment; the process is merely “designed to streamline the administrative process”.
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