SARS’ failure to collect taxes, latest Eskom bailout… SAs need a good sense of humour.
In the 2023 National Budget Speech, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced that SA's taxpayers will kick in yet another R254bn to relieve Eskom's debt over the next three years. In light of this further wasteful spillage of citizens' hard-earned tax money, South Africans would be well-served to rely on the sense of humour they've had to develop to stomach the otherwise unjustifiable absurdity that underpins most of the SA government's decisions. This article by Chris Bateman, a veteran health journalist, demonstrates precisely this by waggishly describing his battle with SARS and an unsuccessful attempt to file his tax return online. Some comic relief never hurt anyone. – Nadya Swart
Going mad over my tax rands…
Next year I won't be filing a tax return. That's because I will have been certified insane by trying to e-file this year's return.
Picture this; I sit with a family friend and former tax lecturer, who, out of the kindness of his heart, helps his inner family circle with e-filing. It's been three hours. It took us an initial 20 minutes to do the income and expenditure because I came prepared. However, we can't submit an e-filing return. The system won't let us in. A red line on my first return line for 2022 tells me, 'Your return is overdue. Please submit urgently.' Well, I did file it, email them supplementary documents, and upload them online.
Strangely my second return for 2022 is happily listed as 'filed.'
The online 'chat' assistance waiting time is 23 minutes, I read. So, I call the 08600 SARS helpline on the landline and, after entering my tax reference number and ID number and choosing an option, am informed that I am 'number 1430 in the queue' and that my call will be 'answered in 10 minutes.' An hour later, I'm told I've reached number 937. In the interim, I've called the same SARS helpline on my cell phone and jumped through the initial filtering hoops to find I am number 543 in the queue. (I've managed to jump the queue – I'm now number 935 on the other landline).
I leave both phone lines open, the infuriating SARS signature tune now playing in out-of-sync stereo. I check on the cell phone – and it suddenly and spontaneously rings off. My tax 'advisor' goes back online with e-filing, and it seems like he's now getting in via 'returns issued,' selecting 'provisional tax IRP6' and the 'second tax period 2/23.' Only to see a dialogue box saying, 'your request is processing…this might take a few seconds'. Except it's been half an hour.
What I'd like to know is whether there's a tax rebate on the time and money spent on trying to file my tax return. It's not exactly an expense incurred in the production of income – but it cost me three or four hours in which I could have written a story earning a significant amount. A considerable expense in my book.
Right now, I can't get into e-filing to submit the previously saved (but apparently not filed first return for 2022).
It should be easy; just retrieve and refile it. After (or before), I can upload my 2022/23 return.
No. Such. Luck.
So far, I've managed to retain my sense of humour, but only by trying not to think about how our tax rands are or have been spent.
Here's a thought! Enoch Godongwana is delivering his budget speech in the Cape Town City Hall as I complete this therapeutic scribble.
Is it possible that a generously estimated 23,9 individual million taxpayers (well under half the population) are all avidly online watching our Finance Minister tell how he'll distribute our money? SARS, you're off the hook! Or is the once-captured, twice-repurposed SARS so understaffed and under-skilled that it simply cannot effectively collect taxes? I'd love to know. My mental health depends on it.
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