SARS changes to employer statement of account

The South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) has recently made changes with regards to the management of payroll taxes in order for employers to more effectively manage their own accounts by way of a number of functions and tools.

SARS states that the aim of these changes is to allow employers to ensure that all their necessary payroll filings are correctly reflected, payments have been correctly allocated and that all charges to their accounts such as adjustments, interest and penalties have been correctly calculated and recorded.

The most recent changes include changes to the statement of account (“SOA”) which were introduced on 26 April 2019. These changes followed complaints by employers of errors on these accounts.

The purpose of the SOA is to reflect the balance and detailed transactions for a tax year with regards to Pay-As-You-Earn (“PAYE”), the Skills Development Levy, the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Employer Tax Incentive (“ETI”) in order to allow for employers to complete their Employer Reconciliation Declaration bi-annually.

In order to make the SOA more clear and comprehensible, SARS made changes to the manner in which financial information is being displayed. In this regard, enhanced descriptions were included for liability and non-liability transactions. Also, all liability transactions are now grouped together and sorted in transaction date order. The exemption to this is any non-financial transactions with a date earlier than the first day of the period under consideration.

In order to identify payments and to better reconcile them with the employer’s bank statements, the SOA now also makes provision for receipt numbers for payments and journals.

Furthermore, ETI transactions (which have no impact on the PAYE account) are now grouped together and reflected at the bottom of the SOA.

In addition to the above, employers previously had to request SARS to make payment reallocations and corrections on their behalf. The monthly employer declaration (“EMP201”) and payment reference number (“PRN”) system was introduced to allow employers to amend their declarations and payments themselves. This tool also allows employers to identify and follow-up on incorrect or missing transactions using the consolidated employer SOA and query function as well as to correct unallocated payments.

Employers also have access to their financial accounts online to view and query transactions processed against their accounts in real-time. SARS also allows for a case management system where employers will be able to log queries, they are unable to resolve themselves and to monitor and track SARS’ progress with regards to the query logged.

With the annual employer reconciliations submission deadline now at 31 May 2019, employers are encouraged to use all these amended functions and tools to submit accurate information and to manage their payroll taxes more effectively in the future.