What You Need to Know About Auto Assessments
/We need to talk about the elephant in the room; Auto Assessments.
SARS is doing auto assessments on taxpayers based on the information that they have received from 3rd parties i.e., banks, medical aids, investment companies etc. If this is your only source of income and you don’t have additional deductions, then you don’t have a problem and it is great that your tax return has been filed.
If you're due a refund, then this will be paid to you very quickly (SARS website says 72 hours from the date of assessment).
If your tax affairs are that simple, then auto-assessments are a wonderful thing!
But…
If you have additional income i.e., rental income, self-employment income etc. SARS will not know about this, and won’t include it in your assessment.
Also, any additional expenses like travel log, donations, additional medical expenses etc. won’t be included in your auto assessment because SARS won’t know about these either.
You should have received an SMS from SARS informing you that you have been selected for auto-assessment - these would have started going out in July. Our experience is that not everyone is selected for auto-assessments, and we don’t know how SARS selects who gets auto-assessments.
If you don’t know if you have an auto-assessment, best to log into your SARS profile or the SARS Mobi-app or you can ask us to assist you. Please don’t assume it’s happening.
You will have 40 working days to ‘not agree’ with the auto assessment and file a return if you want to include any income or expense.
SARS has made it easier this year, and you won’t need to accept if you agree with the auto-assessment.
Pumeza at Anlo says: ‘The frustrating thing we have experienced is, when SARS does an auto assessment and the taxpayer is due a refund based on that information SARS has, but the taxpayer has to do a manual return and has tax to pay, they end up having to repay the refund, and pay in additional taxes.’
Psychologically that just doesn’t work or sit well with anyone. SAICA and various other professional bodies are requesting SARS to review this process, as the taxpayer carries all the risk of the tax return being inaccurate.
We strongly urge our clients to make sure you know your auto assessment is correct before you finalise your tax affairs or start spending the refund, and make sure that the return is correct before filing because:
SARS may not have received all your tax certificates
SARS may not have your most up-to-date tax certificates
You may miss out on claiming certain deductions, which won’t appear on your auto-assessment e.g., wear and tear, home office, donations to charities, travel expenses and medical expenses you paid personally
If you accept your auto assessment and it is incorrect you will not be exempt from penalties and legal action. It is your responsibility to report all income and expenses to SARS.
If you don’t correct the auto-assessment and you failed to declare some of your income, SARS could levy a penalty of up to 200% of the tax payable (plus interest!) should they audit you later and discover their mistake.
SARS may go back to previous tax years for up to 5 years.
We get asked quite a lot ‘but how will SARS know?’ – and here is our experience from doing this for 13+ years. SARS employ people, and their job is to find things out and investigate people’s tax affairs. Currently, all information is electronic and digital, and you can find out so much from social media alone. That includes additional businesses, income people have or property they sell because people love sharing this online willingly. I know you’ll be shocked but this activity is logged at various departments i.e., CIPC or the Deeds office. The people that work at SARS can and will go onto these platforms as part of their job and discover things.
We are always here to help, and we want to support our clients in the best way possible. To review an auto-assessment, we charge less. Pumeza and Esmerelda work with SARS every single day and know how best to deal with SARS related matters.
