# Regulatory Compliance Category > Tax Forum >  Discontinuation of Debit Pull Transactions on eFiling

## Christel

I'm not sure how SARS is trying to simplify service to tax payers by doing this... and why did they at least not warn us.... :Confused: 
*Discontinuation of DebitPull Transactions on eFiling*
Since 2009SARS has been modernising payment and accounting processes with the aim ofempowering taxpayers to manage their financial responsibilities moreindependently, effectively and efficiently.

Starting 4 September 2013, debit pull transactions on eFiling will be phasedout and discontinued. This process will take place over a month. A warningmessage will appear on eFiling, where a debit pull transaction is no longeravailable. You are encouraged to perform credit push transactions or use one ofour alternative methods of payment.

*Top tip:* _Where you dont register for credit push transactionsimmediately, a Debit Pull payment option will be allowed, on condition that youagree to the declaration which appears on the screen._

Additional Payments on eFiling for Income Tax, Provisional Tax, Value-AddedTax (VAT) and Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) is not available via the Debit Pullfacility. In such the Credit Push facility must be used.

A credit push transaction refers to a payment transaction that is initiated oneFiling and presented to the banking product as bill presentation, i.e. at thebank as a payment request awaiting authorisation. You are required to log intothe banking product (e.g. internet banking) and authorise the payment requestto finalise the transaction. Credit push transactions are irrevocable onceapproved. Contact your bank for further information on how to register and usecredit push transactions.

*Alternative methods of payment available include:*

 Over the counter payments at a bank
 EFT  electronic funds transfer using internet banking
 At a specific SARS branch (including customs).

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Citizen X (30-Sep-13), CLIVE-TRIANGLE (05-Sep-13), Dave A (05-Sep-13), Mike C (05-Sep-13), Wildsniper911 (05-Sep-13)

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## Wildsniper911

So this measn that VAT needs to be paid on the 25th of each month if you do not have the credit push facility. This is quite bad,  just when you think SARS couldn't get any worse they always surprise you

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## CLIVE-TRIANGLE

I think what it means is presently you use debit pull, which means SARS "pulls" the payment after you lodged it on efiling. Whereas credit push means you still load it on efiling, but you then have to logon to your bank and authorise release of the payment. The payment dates will not be affected, I think, where you still lodge the return via efiling.

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Wildsniper911 (06-Sep-13)

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## Dave A

> I'm not sure how SARS is trying to simplify service to tax payers by doing this...


Quite simply, they're not  :Frown: 




> So this measn that VAT needs to be paid on the 25th of each month if you do not have the credit push facility.


I think you're still OK paying at the end of the month as long as you're *filing your return* via eFiling. As I recall it's the *manual* returns that have to be in and paid for by the 25th.

EDIT: I see Clive sees this the same way too.

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Wildsniper911 (06-Sep-13)

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## Christel

Yes, this is the way I see it too, BUT just remember that the normal EFT rules will now apply, i.e. if your bank payment takes 24 hours to process, you need to take the time into account when releasing the payment.  
My biggest concern is that my clients will forget to release the payment.  According to the message on efiling you have to authorise the payment on the same day as what you have requested it via efiling, ... otherwise it will lapse.  Then you have to request it again via efiling....

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## CLIVE-TRIANGLE

> My biggest concern is that my clients will forget to release the payment. According to the message on efiling you have to authorise the payment on the same day as what you have requested it via efiling, ... otherwise it will lapse. Then you have to request it again via efiling....


I concern I share. I will most likely let them pay me so that I can release the lot at once.
If nothing else, my account will look stellar!

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## Dave A

You know what - even if I load the payment as a post-dated EFT this still isn't going to work out. If you post-date an EFT transaction using Standard Bank Internet Banking you're not allowed to change the recipient's reference number (been down this road once before for something else). And essentially each payment to SARS should have a unique PRN to ensure correct allocation.

I certainly hope the debit push payments I loaded on eFiling earlier this week for EMP201 payments go through tomorrow.

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## Dave A

It seems all is not lost yet. According to a SAIT technical release this morning:

_In this regard we wish to point out that SAIT has been informed by SARS that if the taxpayer/practitioner agrees to the terms and conditions, the debit pull will still continue (that is it is not phased out yet). However, this will only apply if the payment is on a return and if the taxpayer/practitioner is not using additional payments. Thus the debit pull has not stopped, but there is a warning and a tax practitioner can still use debit pull if you agree to the terms and conditions._

It seems negotiations on the issue are well under way.

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## Christel

Thanks Dave.  I really hope this is the way it will work.  But still, for all other payments it's gonna be a hassle.

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## Dave A

For tax practitioners loading payments on behalf of their clients, it's still going to be a problem as things stand - the terms and conditions require the initiator of the transaction to be an authorised signatory on the bank account. May common sense prevail in the end.

What seems to have got everyone ticked off more than anything else has been the lack of consultation beforehand. 

SARS decides.
SARS implements.
We're all left scrambling trying to point out issues and negotiate after the fact.

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Wildsniper911 (06-Sep-13)

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## CLIVE-TRIANGLE

Besides this regime's propensity for fixing things that are not broken, I cant help wondering "why"? Does anyone perhaps know how it affects bank charges?

I received an interesting take this morning:
"A question was posed as to whether accepting the "terms and conditions" as you mentioned is not perhaps impossible to do by tax practitioners as you have to be a legal party to the bank account in order to do this and as a tax practitioner, you do not have signing powers on your clients' bank accounts and by selecting the debit pull option without signing powers, you could be committing a criminal offence. Is this understanding correct? Further problems with this proposed change are as follows:
•	It is not possible to implement in respect of tall taxpayers particularly those who do not do electronic banking or have no access to the internet (such as farmers and fishermen who may be at sea).
•	Practitioners appointed to submit and pay for taxes cannot access the client's bank accounts.
•	Clients use practitioners to have payments made on time. What if client is not contactable to authorise payment?
•	Employees in a company responsible for payment of eg PAYE do not necessarily have access to the bank account to release payments.
In addition, there is also a problem with the requirement that tax practitioners need to all get a USER ID for a credit push instead of the old method of debit pulls. Further details on this would be appreciated as on phoning Standard bank for this it was established that they do not issue these User IDs to non - business banking clients. So the questions is what are all the individuals going to do who use normal banking? These changes are thus causing major problems for tax practitioners and will definitely cause lots of penalties to be incurred. Your guidance and advise us on the way forward would be greatly appreciated".

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## Wildsniper911

This is SARS's reason for scrapping the Debit Pull




> *What are the problems associated with Debit Pull?* 
> 
> 1. The risks are that the payment is not guaranteed and can be reversed at the request of the client and can also be rejected due to insufficient funds.
> 
> 2. SARS is unable to validate that the person authorising SARS to initiate the debit pull is mandated to do so which can result in payments being withdrawn from incorrect accounts. SARS could be placed at risk as a result of such unauthorised actions. Importantly it is in the interest of the client to not allow unauthorised withdrawals from their accounts.


Reason 1: I do understand their concerns, but so what if the payments are not guaranteed and reversed by the client. The client is levied with a penalty as punishment for being late anyway, I don't believe this is going to encourage people to pay tax on time or more readily.

Reason 2: I do believe it is not SARS's responsibility to ensure payments are made by an authorised person and if it is withdrawn from the correct account. I am not sure what Risk SARS has in this matter I do believe the tax practitioner or taxpayer will be liable for this mistake?

I always make sure that the clients are informed of the amounts of VAT,PAYE or Income Tax that will be paid over and I always verify with them if the bank accounts did not change.

*I think you're still OK paying at the end of the month as long as you're filing your return via eFiling. As I recall it's the manual returns that have to be in and paid for by the 25th.*

Thank you for clarifying

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## Julieann

Does anybody know what the 'access number' is that is required on the credit push?

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## Dave A

> 1. The risks are that the payment is not guaranteed and can be reversed at the request of the client and can also be rejected due to insufficient funds.


Tough shyte - just like it is for the rest of us  :Stick Out Tongue: 




> 2. SARS is unable to validate that the person authorising SARS to initiate the debit pull is mandated to do so which can result in payments being withdrawn from incorrect accounts.


Another "welcome to the real world" reality for any company that accepts a signed debit order from a client - certainly not a risk that can't be reasonably mitigated by the king of documentation and red tape, surely. 

And if someone commits wilful fraud - nail the bastard. You know who your clients are, don't you?
If SARS can't do it, no-one can.

Ultimately, why go extreme on everyone for a few rogue operators?
Which frankly applies to a lot of what SARS has implemented of late. Take registering for VAT as an example.

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## J7J

Hi,

I wanted to do a VAT payment for a client tonight and when I got to the Payment Details screen on e-filing and proceeded to select the bank account name, I got a window with a message that the Debit Pull payment method is no longer available on eFiling and that I must proceed to set up the Credit Push payment option.  (it seems like you can use the debit pull payment method for one month longer, if you are the legally authorised party to this bank account - which I am not sure if I am?  Am a the legally authorised party to this bank account if I am acting as tax practitioner for a client?)

I am a tax practitioner, which does tax returns on behalf of my clients on eFiling.  To setup the Credit Push payment option (this specific client uses ABSA Internet Banking), it seems like I need some of their internet banking login details (like the pin number).  I don't think my client is going to like giving me some of their internet banking login details to set this up on eFiling.  I don't even now whether this is what eFiling is asking for, as they are asking for Account Number, Access Number (are they asking for the pin here?) and user number...

If I can successfully set up the Credit Push payment option, it seems like the client needs to log in to their ABSA Internet banking and authorise this payment.  How does this work on the standard ABSA internet banking?

Am I understanding this message correctly?  Anyone else in the same situation?

Please help!

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## Dave A

> Am a the legally authorised party to this bank account if I am acting as tax practitioner for a client?)


Pretty safe to say if the bank doesn't hold a mandate with you as an authorised signatory or online user, you're not a legally authorised party to the bank account.




> I don't even now whether this is what eFiling is asking for, as they are asking for Account Number, Access Number (are they asking for the pin here?) and user number...


Pretty safe to say they're not looking for the user's PIN too. That would be beyond unreasonable, even by SARS's standards.

As for how it works, I suggest go to this page at SARS, then scroll down past the "why SARS is causing this misery" piece to the buttons below. 

Clicking on each provides additional information, such as how to set things up on efiling, and what to do from the online banking service side of things 
(with varying degrees of success - or as in my case - the useful information that the credit push option simply doesn't work with Standard Bank internet banking as yet).

The ABSA instructions look rather cryptic, but I'm not familiar with the product. Maybe it'll make sense to an ABSA account holder.

Good luck!

And if anyone gets it right, maybe make a post here to fill in the gaps and give everyone else a head start. At this point, as willing as I was to try to blaze a trail, it seems it's not an option for me right now.

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J7J (26-Sep-13)

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## J7J

Thank you.

If I file the return via e-filing and request that the client does an EFT via internet banking (at the moment, I think this might be the easiest route for now)...

1)  Does the client select "SARS - VAT" (or something of this sort) as the beneficiary for a VAT return payment?
2)  Do you just use the return's PRN number as reference to make sure that the payment is allocated correctly?  Or is it the PRN number and something else?  On the VAT return there is a long reference number next to Payment Reference No. field.  Do I use only the number, or do I put PRN in front of it?
3)  Anything else that I must tell the client to do when setting up the beneficiary or making the payment for this return?

Thanks!

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## Justloadit

Some of the internet banking systems allow you to set up a user with limited options on your account. One of these options is to allow a specific user to set up payments, or load payments onto the specific account system. This is as far as they can go, no balance check, no transaction check, simply set up a payment request.

The authorized user can now at any time there after log in as he normally would and authorize the payment.

Some people may wonder what is the advantage of this, well if you have multiple regular payments, then you personally do not need to load all the creditors that require payment, but simply authorizing specific payments as you wish, there by saving time.

Maybe the idea here is to set up a internet bank user on your system with limited rights, such as only setting up a payment on a creditor.

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## J7J

So I asked my client to do an EFT for the VAT payment using the pre-loaded beneficiary for SARS - VAT and it asked for an account number and name.  It did not accept the PRN number as the account number, so we didn't know what to put in there...  So the route I thought was going to work best, wasn't working all that well.

So I set up the Credit Push payment option to try this route.  The client uses ABSA Internet Banking.  I am happy to report that it seemed to work!

TIP: When setting up the Credit Push payment option, it asked for an access number after the account number.  I was not sure what it was, but you can't save the settings without putting something in there.  First, I put in a "1" (same as the user number).  It accepted this when I saved the settings, but the payment failed.  So I went back and changed this to the account number (ie. you put the account number under account number and access number).  The payment went through successfully.

The client then logged in onto the ABSA internet banking site and apparently, when you go into payments, there is something for authorisations (with options for VAT, payroll, etc) and she could authorise it from there.  I didn't see the screens myself, but I think it was not too difficult to get to the place to authorise this payment.  The client could see on her bank that it went off (can't remember for sure now whether it went off as a line on her transaction listing, I think so - but it hasn't gone off her balance...) 

On e-filing, this payment is not under Unpaid anymore and under History, it still says Awaiting Authorisation, so I will check tomorrow to see whether it goes off the statement for VAT.    

Hopefully the above helps someone else :-)

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Dave A (30-Sep-13)

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## nkawit

I had no problem with credit push. Went into my organization settings, opened the bank account, changed it to push, went to my return, clicked create payment, selected the date, clicked OK.

Went into FNB saw it appeared in enterprise banking under SARS Efiling, clicked authorize.

My staff can issue a credit push too, then schedule an authorizer to authorize in FNB.

Works for me (tm) , plus is easier as I can say yay or nay on FNB side.

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## Mike C

Credit Push works fine with ABSA Cash Focus as well.

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## Dave A

How is credit push working out for post-dated transactions?

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## Mike C

> How is credit push working out for post-dated transactions?


Haven't tried that yet, Dave.

I submitted, then went onto the Cash Focus immediately and approved the transaction.  I think it may become a hassle when the Auditors submit from their side and have to let me know to approve.

It is particularly an issue with Cash Focus as it only works from 6am until 5pm weekdays and even less on Saturday.

If the transaction is not approved and the date expires, Cash Focus reports it the next day as an "unapproved transaction" and the payment will need to be resubmitted.

Shouldn't be too much of a problem unless one leaves payments to the last minute.

I still prefer the debit-pull though!

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Dave A (01-Oct-13)

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## IMHO

Well, I just discovered this mess tonight. I am always last minute on everything.

I tried their push thingy and were unsuccessful, only managed to create a duplicate payment that I 'owe' them know. After another try, I ended up with two bank accounts, duplicated. BTW, I am the legal account holder.

Next try I just closed their warning with the X top right and proceeded the normal way. 

Will see what happens. Got all the sms's as normal as well as the confirmation e-mail as normal.

Keep us posted. Suppose I will now have to go open this 'push' thing. Hope Standard Bank knows how to do it!

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## IMHO

My bank does not reflect the payments this morning.  :Confused: 

PS. I see it normally reflects on the 1st, so will give it time till tomorrow to reflect.

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## IMHO

Just got mail from eFiling that the Bank confirmed payment.

So, now to setup things for the next payment, which, as I understand, will not go through on the old method again.

Dave, maybe you could sent a general notice from the forum, like you sometimes do, to warn people in the end October cycle that they will not be able to pay as usual. Surely there is some that is going to be confronted with this at the last minute. As this tread started on 5 September, I doubt that the people who paid end August and is due to pay again end October, will be aware of it. I am talking about individuals like myself, not about practitioners who will know by now.

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## Dave A

> Dave, maybe you could sent a general notice from the forum, like you sometimes do


I might just have to do that. For business related warnings and notices I've been in the habit of just sending it to the SMME owners and managers group of late, but I see you haven't joined that grouping, so I expect there might well be many others...

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Chrisjan B (01-Oct-13)

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## geraldenek

Dave, before you start sending notifications - I just received an e-mail for SAIT.  It has been postponed till the end of October 2013.DISCONTINUATION_OF_DEBIT_PULL_TRANSACTIONS_ON_eFILING_EXTENDED.pdf

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Mike C (01-Oct-13)

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## IMHO

This is what I have done to be ready for the next round of payments.

I went into my online internet banking, Payments and Transfers, My Bills. You must agree to their terms and that is it. Now you are ready to be billed by SARS.

Next I went into my banking details at SARS. Change your bank account to the top option of Push credits or something. The layout changes an in the middle something about Absa is displayed. Open the box and look for Autopay, Standard bank. Select that, save and close.

That is it. Apparently I am now ready? Please let me know if I am wrong.

Seems like it works like PayPal. You 'buy' something from SARS (Paypal). You go to your bank account under MyBills (Paypal) and whalla, there is the bill. Authorise it and your payment is done!

I am concerned by the clause on the Standard Bank site, that payments can take up to 3 working days to complete. How does this affect payment on the last day of the month on SARS side. Will I be fined?

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## IMHO

In hind sight, I could have done this yesterday and processed my payment like that already. What threw me was 

a. I did not know about MyBills on the Standardbank site.
b. I did not see the Autopay Standard Bank option on the SARS site, as I was looking for a Standardbank option. Which is there for Business banking, but does not help the individual much!

So, all the best for those that follow at the end of the month! HTH.

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## Dave A

> I am concerned by the clause on the Standard Bank site, that payments can take up to 3 working days to complete. How does this affect payment on the last day of the month on SARS side. Will I be fined?


It's going to an FNB account, so my experience is it should reflect in the account of the recipient by the next business day at the latest, but dated as the day of the transaction per your Standard Bank account. But bear this in mind - you must process the payment before 7.00 p.m - transactions after 7.00p.m. will be dated for the following business day.

Personally I'm setting the day before the last day as the deadline once the debit pull option is over, just to play safe. Risking a 10% penalty for the sake of one day just isn't worth it. (Same goes for fighting for the penalty to be waivered too).

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## KimH

I've just submitted my return and used the credit push system.
Works like a charm with Nedbank - I also like the fact that you can select a future dated payment.  

All my clients have selected EFT payments, I have recommended that they load payment by Friday to ensure sufficient time to reflect in Sars account by due date.

Although Sars have extended this for another month, I'd rather get my clients used to the new way of doing things as quickly as possible.

I understand the reasons behind the decision to do away with Debit pull, but am concerned that some of my clients are just not going to make the payment on time for whatever reason, at least I knew that when I was loading them, things were paid on time.  But, I am a control freak and this is all part of learning to let go I guess  :Wink:

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## Christel

I have "forced" all my clients to do an EFT rather than struggling with the credit push method.  All I need to do monthly is to make sure I get all their info at least 3-4 days before the due date, submit the emp201, give them the prn & amount, then they have at least 2 days to effect payment via internet or cheque @ the bank. I can see this will still cause many headaches, as my month end is normally hectic, and now I have to move forward all emp201 processing... and some of my clients are always late to supply me with their wages details... If this was a way of Sars to ensure a nice Christmas bonus for their staff - i.e. all the penalties that will be raised on late payments, then they will succeed.

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## Dave A

> I've just submitted my return and used the credit push system.
> Works like a charm with Nedbank - I also like the fact that you can select a future dated payment.


Score one for Nedbank. 

Unfortunately no such luck as having a future dated payment authorisation option with the Standard Bank My Bills channel. Despite me setting the payment date as 7th November in SARS eFiling, on the My Bills side the bill is shown as presented and due today (5th).

I've loaded a payment on another company dated for the 7th too. Let's see if it's still there waiting to be authorised on the 7th when I actually want it paid.

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## Justloadit

It may be that SARS does not have an account with Standard bank, and that Standard bank has made the adjustment for time for the funds to reach SARS bank account, in order that you avoid penalties for late payment.

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## Dave A

> It may be that SARS does not have an account with Standard bank, and that Standard bank has made the adjustment for time for the funds to reach SARS bank account, in order that you avoid penalties for late payment.


More likely the problem is the My Bills functionality is version 1.0 (if even that). You just don't have an option to edit the transaction date on the My Bill side.

Today I've tried to release that second payment loaded. My Bills is telling me it can't access the information.

At this stage there are a few options as to what might be causing the problem:
Standard Bank is having trouble connecting to SARS todayThe credit pull notification has gone AWOLAs the credit pull transaction is loaded against a secondary account on my banking profile, Standard Bank isn't using the right bank account number for the lookup on SARS's database
Given that the My Bills functionality for this credit pull transaction method was patched together and rolled out in a rush, and how smoothly things ran yesterday (apart from the transaction date issue) when everything was pretty much in default mode, personally I'm betting it's option 3.

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## Dave A

> At this stage there are a few options as to what might be causing the problem:
> 
> 3. As the credit pull transaction is loaded against a secondary account on my banking profile, Standard Bank isn't using the right bank account number for the lookup on SARS's database


Yep - this definitely seems to be the problem. I've had to resort to making an EFT payment, which due to a quirk in the recipient reference validation routine is going to lead to even more excitement, I think. You can't assign a period in the payment reference - it will only accept eight zeros.

This means the funds will be allocated against the oldest outstanding, which is currently zero because the October 2013 return "has been paid" by a credit pull transaction (which is now not going to be paid in the end  :Frown:  ).

I've fiddled around eFiling trying to amend the payment of the 102013 EMP201 - haven't found a way to do it yet.
Any suggestions, anyone?

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## duncan drennan

The only thing that is bugging me about the push system is that on FNB I can't set a future dated payment. The only option is to pay and the money is immediately removed from the account regardless of the day the push was setup on eFiling (and that data does reflect in the push system on FNB's online banking). That means I have to worry about logging on and making the payment on the correct day. My solution to that is just to file the return as late as possible.

This must be a nightmare for accountants doing returns for their clients.....

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## Justloadit

Hi Duncan,

Yes there is, Go to payments, on the left top side of the list of beneficiaries, there is a Menu tab, click on it, the first column near the top, look for 'Scheduled Payments", click that, now look for the "Add" button. To make a scheduled payment, the beneficiary must have been previously set up.

This is a nice automated feature as opposed to a Debit Order. You can set up a scheduled payment every month on a specific date, for the same amount, up to a year in advance. You can stop this payment schedule anytime by deleting it.

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## Mike C

> I've fiddled around eFiling trying to amend the payment of the 102013 EMP201 - haven't found a way to do it yet.
> Any suggestions, anyone?


Have you tried going to PAYE Maintenance - and re-allocating the money to the correct period?  It can only be done if the amount is in credit.  Once done it takes aaaaaaages to process (I mean weeks, not days or hours) so once done, don't expect it to show immediately.  I have only done it once for a small amount and was not thrilled with the result.

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Dave A (08-Nov-13)

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## Dave A

> Have you tried going to PAYE Maintenance - and re-allocating the money to the correct period?


I suspected that might be my only option without actually going into SARS  :Frown: 
I was just hoping that I'd missed a trick.

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## Dave A

> Have you tried going to PAYE Maintenance - and re-allocating the money to the correct period?


So far the payment I made via EFT isn't reflecting in eFiling, and the credit pull transaction I loaded on eFiling is still attached to the EMP201 return with no obvious way to cancel or detach it - a week after the event.

So far, not so good  :Frown:

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## Mike C

Well I hit the first hassle of the Debit Pull transaction today.  Submitted my VAT return, said pay.  Received notification that it was sent to the bank, but the bank has not confirmed it yet.  Went into the account to approve it ... and it is not there.

Now what?  Do I just wait for it to appear?  Don't want to make another transaction as that might truly foul things up for SARS.

I also see that an amount that I paid on my EMP201 from Sept is reflected as not having been paid.  However it reflects as having been taken from the bank account.

I think that was the last of the "Pull" transactions I did.  Oi Vey!

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## Dave A

> Well I hit the first hassle of the Debit Pull transaction today.  Submitted my VAT return, said pay.  Received notification that it was sent to the bank, but the bank has not confirmed it yet.  Went into the account to approve it ... and it is not there.


Did you load a _debit pull_ or a _credit push_ transaction, Mike?

I saw the debit pull option was still there last week when I was processing my October EMP 201's last week, but assumed it would lead to a dead end...

I also see SARS is aware of the Standard Bank My Bills problem.

Oi Vey indeed!
Another fine mess you've got us into, SARS!

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## Mike C

> Did you load a debit pull or a credit push transaction, Mike?


Oh yes - sorry - it was a credit push transaction.  Towards the end of the day I decided to do it again, as nothing was reflecting in the bank account, and this time it went through without a hassle.  Now I have two payment reference numbers.  Yay!  I wonder how long it will take for them to start realising that this will cause confusion sometime down the line?

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## Dave A

> Towards the end of the day I decided to do it again, as nothing was reflecting in the bank account, and this time it went through without a hassle.


Now *that* is scary!

Getting inconsistent results is normally tougher to resolve than consistently getting the wrong result.

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## IMHO

So, what is the latest? My payment is due 30th Nov. Is the Standardbank problem sorted out yet?

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## Dave A

> So, what is the latest? My payment is due 30th Nov. Is the Standardbank problem sorted out yet?


I'll be giving it a whirl on Monday.

Does anyone know the answer to this one:
The October 2013 period VAT return is filed via eFiling.
The payment (per force) is done via EFT (i.e. a Manual Payment *not* through eFiling).
Is payment due on 25th November or 29th November 2013?

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## IMHO

E-filing has always been last day of the month, ignoring weekends, did it change? There was one anomaly recently, but I can not remember the circumstances. 

I would imagine payment is also on 29/30th, as filing of the return is still via e-filing. The payment date is extended because you file the return via e-filing, vs manual filing. But then again, what do I know. They are a law onto their own.

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## vieome

If you using standard bank secure online  just make sure you check transfer all payments and go to  SARS payment , it wont show up in view payments once you done debit pull, you have to go to all payments and then to payments to SARS and confirm it there, and then it goes to view payments were you release.

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IMHO (22-Nov-13)

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## IMHO

Answer from Standardbank

Now how do I make sure? Is it even in my hands? 




> They do experience some technical issues with the SARS My Bills payment function on Internet Banking. We do apologies for any inconvenience.  
> 
> The problem is with the link between SARS and the Bank, which are currently being dealt with as a priority.  We can’t confirm when the issue will be resolved but they want to solve this as soon as possible.  
> 
> You can link SARS as a third party payment in the interim to ensure that you pay them via a third party linking on the internet if the system is not working by the time your payment is due. You must just make sure that they don’t deduct the payment automatically and then pay a double payment.  
> 
> Trust you find same in order. 
> 
> Kind Regards

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## Dave A

> So, what is the latest? My payment is due 30th Nov. Is the Standardbank problem sorted out yet?


MyBills works fine as long as you're loading the payment against the primary account for the profile you use for internet banking. Secondary accounts are still not finding any MyBills you might have loaded against them as yet by the look of things.

Something else to watch for - releasing a MyBill payment *does* come out of your monthly payment transaction limit. I've had to increase my limit as a result.

ps. 29th November 2013 is the last business day to pay if it was a VAT payment you were referring to.

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## IMHO

Standard bank is still a F up. My bill seems to work on the SARS side, but as soon as they transfer you to standard bank, you experience a session time out.

I then tried EFT. What a nightmare.
You have to do it as a once off, but also tick save as beneficiary. (There is a glitch that require this, so I am told)
Then you must figure out the beneficiary ref number. In short, go on e-filing to payment history. You will see columns there for every payment. Look at the one you are trying to do and write down the VAT number in the first column, then ad a V, then add the number in the column that start wit a C.

And that is it. The rest is as per normal. If a buddy did not tell me about the V, I would never have figured it out. Thanks Willem!

Hope this helps someone.

Apparently the bill method works fine with all the other banks.

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## Dave A

> Does anyone know the answer to this one:
> The October 2013 period VAT return is filed via eFiling.
> The payment (per force) is done via EFT (i.e. a Manual Payment *not* through eFiling).
> Is payment due on 25th November or 29th November 2013?


I've been exploring the VAT guide, and it seems it should have been the 25th.

From the guide:

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## IMHO

And still Standard bank's MyBills is not compatible with SARS E-File systems. Five months and counting...

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## Christel

Hi there,
If you submit your VAT return via e-filing and you pay it after the 25th via eFT, you are still fine.  No penalty or interest will be charged.  It's only if you submit your return manually that you need to adhere to the 25th rule as in the past.  hope this helps clear confusion...

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Dave A (07-Feb-14)

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## Dave A

SARS needs to update their VAT guide then  :Stick Out Tongue:

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## Christel

> SARS needs to update their VAT guide then


yes... this is scheduled to happen in about 10 years from now.... :Smile:

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## Justloadit

I have noted on 2 accessions, in which there was a VAT refund, that the refunds was done the day after it was efiled, and this happened before the 25th of the month.
I must say that when there is a VAT refund on a large amount, it can take a few months, which does screw up with your cash flow. There was a query, but no one communicated even when we called SARS. Fortunately we were able to speak to someone in the upper echelon who cleared it up.

I suggest that if you have a refund due, that you have your transaction records ready for uploading if requested, and be ready to also upload a number of invoices that they will request. The faster you can oblige, and if all is in order, the faster the refund will take place.

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