A taxing tarry in a drizzly queue
November 22, 2009
By Thabiso Mochiko
If you are reading this now and haven't submitted your tax return, you have until midnight to do it on your own and online.
No Sars office will be open to assist those who did not submit their tax returns before Friday's cutoff .
On Friday, thousands of people queued at Sars offices around the country in a scramble to meet the eFiling deadline. In the centre of Johannesburg CBD, SarsS set up a tent in Library Gardens to assist hundreds of late filers who patiently queued in the rain.
At the Carlton Centre a power failure hindered attempts by last-minute filers to comply. In Durban, 900 people were still in queues at 4pm.
Sars' spokesperson Adrian Lackay said on Friday that only about 3.5 million tax returns had been submitted. He stressed that no extension would be given and that those who had not submitted their returns had until today to do so - but only online.
That left more than 1.5 million personal taxpayers who had failed to meet the deadline. Sars has vowed it will institute harsh penalties from tomorrow for those who have ignored repeated requests, alerts and warnings
On Friday, 152 000 eFiling submissions were processed. Lackay lashed out at people and companies who were submitting their returns late, saying that because of the increased volume, Sars was forced to increase capacity of the system to handle volumes five times bigger than necessary.
"Taxpayers should ask themselves whether it is prudent for their tax money to be spent this way. There is real costs to increasing the system's volume," he said.
There are 5 million individual tax payers in the country. - Thabiso Mochiko
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