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Ensuring Fairness
Ensuring Fairness
The South African Revenue Service’s (SARS) action of incorrectly invalidating objections is one of the issues raised and addressed in the Tax Ombud’s Systemic Investigation Report (2020), which concluded that there was a 31% error rate where objections were incorrectly invalidated for various reasons. The case below illustrates another instance of SARS incorrectly invalidating an objection.
The OTO does not only help speed up the resolution of taxpayer complaints and get the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to pay refunds due, however there are also instances where the OTO secures taxpayers thousands of rands in interest thereon. The case in this issue is an example.
October 2023 marked the OTO’s 10th anniversary, and we are taking our stakeholders down memory lane by publishing this birthday issue. It chronicles our history and 10 years of ensuring fairness, and includes successes and challenges. Through illustrations and words, it tells the rich history of how an idea was converted into an important institution […]
Deregistering as a VAT vendor can be challenging, as the case below illustrates, where the South African Revenue Service (SARS) delayed deregistering a taxpayer’s VAT profile for over a year.
On Thursday 19 October 2023, the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) at the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) will host a stakeholder engagement presentation by the Office of the Tax Ombud ( OTO) for staff, students and industry partners. The event is scheduled for 11am in the Senate Building. Dean of EMS Professor […]
Having stood the test of time as a capable organisation with a proven track record in helping to resolve taxpayers’ complaints against the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the Office of the Tax Ombud (OTO) is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Established on 1 October 2013, the OTO has been credited with improving the country’s tax […]
Many taxpayers are unaware that they have a right to approach the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and request remission of administrative penalties. Although SARS has many options for dealing with such requests, including allowing, partially allowing or disallowing requests, the revenue collector must respond within a reasonable time. The case below, a rare complaint […]