SARS – it could be worse

SARS has obvious weaknesses, but if we have to be honest, our tax authorities are better to work with than those in our neighbouring countries.

SARS – it could be worse
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As taxpayers in South Africa, we can rightly complain about money being wasted by the state. Open any publication, financial or otherwise, and some example of government wastage will be there to raise your blood pressure.

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But this should not detract from the fact that it is much easier to work with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) as a tax- gathering organisation than it is with most other tax authorities in the countries to the north of us.

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Often, when disputes are settled by judges in the tax courts or the High Court of South Africa, the Commissioner of SARS is told to go back, raise new assessments and get on with things. And he does. Not so in other jurisdictions. In certain African countries, and I speak from personal experience, the High Court or the tax boards’ orders are sidestepped and avoided by tax authorities.

Letters are left unanswered, and taxpayers are promised various remedies that simply do not happen. When this happens, the tax practitioners, be they lawyers or accounting professionals, have little recourse.

Admittedly, I find that there are glaring faults with SARS, such as the inordinately long time it takes to make an appointment as a tax practitioner, or the fact that e-filing is, to me anyway, a highly complicated thing to master.

But although dialogue with SARS isn’t exactly easy, it is possible to speak to someone if you are prepared to wait in a queue, and it’s often possible to resolve issues without having to approach the courts.It’s all in the approach adopted by the practitioner or taxpayer, I think.

Helpful staff in smaller SARS offices
The ability to lodge objections in SARS offices countrywide is a real bonus. I travel extensively and so make use of the quieter SARS offices in the central parts of the country, where I have always found the staff to be helpful. After all, it’s simply about paying the correct amount of tax, nothing more and nothing less.

So we should be grateful that we have a SARS staff complement whom we can deal with without having to resort to the threat of legal action.

In other jurisdictions, taxpayers are often scared to approach the court for fear of victimisation by the tax authorities. Here in South Africa, with its large tax base, this has not been the case in any matters I have dealt with. You can settle a legal dispute and then carry on as usual.

In some other jurisdictions, to make matters worse, the judges are beholden to the state and are partisan in any matter that involves a state organ such as the tax authorities. This means that in order to get relief, the taxpayer must approach the country’s Appeal Court. It’s a deplorable state of affairs.

Using our taxes properly
Now, if only South Africans could rally behind a leader who respects the property of citizens and sees to it that our funds are used with caution and wisdom. The country would indeed be a better place. But the moral of this story is that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. We should be thankful for what we have.