Four Reasons For Hiring A Registered Practitioner For The 2025 Filing Season

Individual taxpayers, trustees, employers, and tax professionals are all impacted by the significant modifications the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has made to personal income tax returns, trust tax returns, and pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) penalties for the 2025 filing season.

Tax laws are subject to numerous revisions annually, making it difficult to stay current and comprehend the nuances of the law. Thankfully, there are professionals that know how to go through this maze. Tax professionals stay up to date on all changes to tax laws, so you don’t have to. Tax professionals are meant to reassure you that you are secure from a SARS audit and that you do not under- or overstate your claims. It is important to check that your tax practitioner is registered with a recognised controlling body such as SAIPA– this is a legal requirement from SARS.

This filing season, there are four reasons to work with a qualified tax professional:

1. Have you been auto-assessed?

As part of the auto-assessment procedure, SARS has been sending out “original estimated assessments” to taxpayers with ostensibly straightforward tax matters for a few years now. Your taxes may be processed more easily this way, but SARS’ auto-assessment could not be accurate. Think about having your auto-assessed tax return reviewed by a tax professional. You will need to file a tax return if you disagree with the auto-assessment; a tax professional can accomplish this for you. By precisely declaring your income and deductions, you can avoid penalties and make sure you’ve claimed all available permitted expenses.

2. Learn about the improvements to personal income tax.

A licensed tax professional can help you prepare your tax return accurately because SARS has implemented a number of personal income tax modifications this filing season that can be challenging to comprehend and compute.

In a community property marriage:

Each married taxpayer in a community of property is subject to taxation on half of their passive income, which includes capital gains, dividends, interest on investments, and rental income.

SARS has recovered each taxpayer’s “married in community of property” status from their prior declaration for Filing Season 2023 onwards, and they have worked with the Department of Home Affairs to verify their marital status.

This demonstrates how difficult it can be to cross-check and calculate passive income. If the spouses are successfully matched by SARS and have interest-bearing investments, SARS will duplicate the interest investment certificate on both spouses’ returns (based on a 50/50 division), and they will each be taxed on half of the total passive income upon assessment.

Disclosure of foreign income:

South African residents are required to report income derived from overseas sources. It is crucial to choose and fill in the appropriate field if an individual is paying taxes in another country and/or working in both South Africa and another country.

Asset and liability statement:

Each year, provisional taxpayers with business interests must include a cost-based statement of their assets and liabilities on their tax filings. On their 2024 tax return, those with assets over R50 million are required to report certain assets at market value.

3. Handle improvements to your trust income tax return.

Trust tax returns can be difficult to submit, therefore it’s better to have a qualified tax professional file them for you. Additional questions regarding the number of trusts and whether any local or foreign funds were vested in the trust as a beneficiary of another trust or are presumed to have accrued during the year of assessment have been added to the Income Tax Return Wizard (found on the form wizard tab). The return will open the necessary amount of fields for these distributions based on the questions.

Passive trusts now have a new, streamlined return, and the Tax Return Wizard requires that the appropriate return type be chosen.

Additional improvements to the trust return (ITR12T) include a beneficial ownership statement and a new column for credit agreements and debtors’ allowances, or ‘lay byes’. The trust return must be uploaded and submitted with the required accompanying documentation.

4. Prevent penalty for PAYE underestimation

Tax professionals can aid you in avoiding fines or, if they cannot be avoided, in adjusting administrative penalties. If the whole amount of employee tax deducted or withheld, or that should have been deducted or withheld for the period, is unclear, a 10% monthly administrative penalty of the total employee tax amount as calculated by SARS (based on easily accessible information) may be due.

Contact WVDW now!

If you have any queries, please contact our offices for assistance.
011 476 1112
info@wvdw.co.za

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