Taxpayers often find themselves caught in complex disputes due to administrative errors or delays by SARS in processing their objections. When these issues result in unfair financial burden, the Office of the Tax Ombud (OTO) serves as an independent mediator, ensuring that taxpayers are treated fairly. In this case, the OTO played a crucial role in […]
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.