Personal tax · ITR12
Your tax return, prepared properly and filed on time.
Whether that is a single IRP5, or commission and a logbook, a rental, a disposal and something offshore. If you were auto-assessed and are not sure whether to accept it, that is the same conversation.
Returns are prepared and submitted by Brandon Iverach, Professional Accountant (SA) and Registered SARS Tax Practitioner PR-0025122.
Fixed fee, quoted in writing before we start.
01 · What changes the answer
What changes the answer.
A return is the sum of what goes into it. These are the things that move the number, and most of them appear on no certificate your employer sends:
- 01Commission income, and the section 11(a) expenses claimed against it
- 02A travel allowance, and the logbook that has to support it
- 03A company car fringe benefit
- 04Rental income, and the expenses that reduce it
- 05A side business, freelance or consulting income
- 06Medical expenses you paid yourself that the scheme did not cover
- 07Section 18A donations to registered public benefit organisations
- 08Capital gains on property, shares or crypto
- 09Foreign income, offshore holdings and foreign tax credits
- 10A home office
- 11Income from a trust, or a loan account with one
Some of these increase what you owe. Some reduce it. Only one of those is optional to declare.
02 · If your return is straightforward
If your return is straightforward.
Plenty are. One IRP5, a medical scheme, a retirement annuity, and nothing unusual.
Those still have to be filed correctly and on time, and they still benefit from someone checking the certificates against what SARS was told. If that is your situation, this is a short engagement and a fixed fee, and you will know where you stand.
03 · Provisional taxpayers
Provisional taxpayers.
If you earn income that is not taxed through a payroll — rental, a business, commission paid gross, investment income above the exemption — you are almost certainly a provisional taxpayer.
That means two returns a year before the annual one, each an estimate, and each carrying a penalty if the estimate is careless. Getting the estimate close is most of the work, and it is far easier with last year’s numbers in front of you.
04 · Returns you have not filed
Returns you have not filed.
Outstanding returns do not go away, and they attract administrative penalties that run monthly per return until the return is submitted.
If you have years outstanding, say so at the first conversation. It is a more common situation than people assume, it is fixable, and the sooner it is dealt with the smaller it is.
05 · If you were auto-assessed
If you were auto-assessed.
SARS may have assessed you already, using data from your employer, your medical scheme, your retirement fund and your bank.
That data is usually correct. What it cannot include is anything nobody reported — which is most of section 01 above. If your affairs are simple, an auto-assessment is often right, and we will tell you so and you can accept it.
06 · What you receive
What you receive.
The return itself, prepared, checked against your documents and submitted.
And an annual Wealth & Tax Report: one document setting out your tax position and your asset position for the year, built from your own certificates and statements. We produce it in-house. It is not a standard output of filing a return, and most people have never seen their position laid out in one place.
07 · When this needs to happen
When this needs to happen.
Filing season has a deadline and so does each provisional return.
Start with a call.
Thirty minutes, no charge, and you will know where you stand.
Accounting Connect (Pty) Ltd · Reg 2018/528820/07 · Oudtshoorn, Western Cape. We work with clients across South Africa, remotely.
If your affairs have outgrown this page
A trust, offshore holdings, a business disposal, or a decision about where an asset should sit — those are a different conversation, and the tax question moves from what happened last year to what should happen next.