Month: March 2022

Tax compliance among Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) has been forced into the spotlight by The South African Revenue Service (SARS) who in January launched a new monthly newsletter dedicated to the sector. The January issue covered the matter of tax compliance and revealed a number of new initiatives by SARS to streamline services and encourage smaller businesses to meet their tax obligations.

While SARS indicated that the aim of the new newsletter is to generally “share relevant information pertaining to your SMME’s tax affairs and interaction with SARS [and help] you better understand how to meet your compliance obligations” it’s clear that by so comprehensively dealing with compliance in the first issue SARS has earmarked the area as being of major concern and a focus going forward.

A nightmare situation for many South African taxpayers is discovering after their year-end tax assessment that the PAYE they paid on various income streams during the year was not enough. The result is a substantial tax debt, which can often not be settled in time to prevent hefty late payment penalties and interest.

To avoid this happening, taxpayers with multiple incomes can request PAYE to be deducted at a higher rate than the normal tax rate during the year. In fact, from 1 March, SARS will do this automatically for pensioners with multiple incomes.

In this article we discover why there is often a tax shortfall even when PAYE is deducted from multiple income streams, and how to avoid this in future.