Late payment - according to SARS

[Dave A]

I released payment for the August 2014 EMP201 on 5th September 2014 via Standard Bank's My Bills facility.
And I've checked - the money left my bank account on 5th September.

According to the EMPSA, SARS only received the payment on 12th September 2014.
And have accordingly raised a penalty and interest.

[Justloadit]

Bummer. No matter how much you plead, they are not going to listen.

I wonder who's fault is it?
SARs or Stranded?

[Houses4Rent]

What do the banks usually say, it takes up to three business days? That would be the 10/09. Ask them why it took longer and make them liable for the delay.

However, I find all the time that once the funds arrived they get back dated and whenever I care to check it took all my transfers 1 business day across all banks.

Show SARS that the funds left your account 05/09 and quote the banks lead time guarantee (3 days?) and then ask both parties what the problem is.

[Justloadit]

What do the banks usually say, it takes up to three business days? That would be the 10/09. Ask them why it took longer and make them liable for the delay.

However, I find all the time that once the funds arrived they get back dated and whenever I care to check it took all my transfers 1 business day across all banks.

Show SARS that the funds left your account 05/09 and quote the banks lead time guarantee (3 days?) and then ask both parties what the problem is.

SARS states that the money must be in their account by the 7th, the onus is in the payer to ensure the funds are there on the required date.

[Houses4Rent]

I know and agree that its the receiving date, not the sending date. If its the 7th which is a Sunday I would not have send it later than 4th as I would expect it to arrive on Fri 05th. I had same problem myself, but I did not know the finer details back then. I pleaded that I did not know better, promised that it won't happen again and was let off the hook.

However, it still makes not sense to me that it too until the 12th.

[CLIVE-TRIANGLE]

I released payment for the August 2014 EMP201 on 5th September 2014 via Standard Bank's My Bills facility.
And I've checked - the money left my bank account on 5th September.

According to the EMPSA, SARS only received the payment on 12th September 2014.
And have accordingly raised a penalty and interest.

Submit a request for waiver of penalty and interest, Dave. Support the request with the bank statements and so on, because you can show your compliance and that you did not benefit from the delay, which is a key criteria.

You can do it by email to contact.central@sars.gov.za

[Dave A]

The interesting thing is I doubt I'm alone. With the known problems Standard Bank was having with their IT systems at the time, I suspect there must be other users of Standard Bank's My Bills facility that have been affected.

I have little doubt SARS will waive the penalty and interest once it is brought to their attention. I know they do make allowances for IT gremlins causing mischief.

Given that it is a system error though, I do wonder whether it falls to Standard Bank to raise the issue with SARS, rather than each affected party to raise it individually.

I was thinking of leaving it until next month, and if it isn't resolved by then, taking it up with SARS.
Any thoughts on that?

[CLIVE-TRIANGLE]

and if it isn't resolved by then

really?

[Beancounter]

Given that it is a system error though, I do wonder whether it falls to Standard Bank to raise the issue with SARS, rather than each affected party to raise it individually.

I was thinking of leaving it until next month, and if it isn't resolved by then, taking it up with SARS.
Any thoughts on that?

Good luck putting any reliance on Standard Bank. Their business banking clients can still not see payments loaded via eFiling and they have to pay by EFT. All requests to Standard Bank to look into their technical handling of the credit push payment system have fallen on deaf ears. None of my clients with FNB, ABSA or Nedbank have any problems. They authorise the payment on the due date and it is still on time. Only ABSA has this irritating little feature where the payment loaded on eFiling expires at midnight but otherwise all is well for clients of those 3 banks.

[Dave A]

and if it isn't resolved by then

really?

I take it you think I'm being a little over-optimistic

[dellatjie]

Dave, I have been succesful in applying for waiving of penalties and interest by going into the payment history on efiling, and proving that the request date was on time.

[Christel]

Yes, we object all the time and almost every-time they waiver the penalties & interest.

[Richard S]

Five or six years ago when I still paid by cheque SARS penalised me for a late payment. I showed them the two cheques for the two cc's and explained that they were both in the same envelope, but one had been stamped received on Friday the 6th and the other on Monday the 9th. I explained that the cheques were dropped into the postbox at SARS on the evening of the Thursday the 5th. They were not interested in the slightest. Arguing the point over the course of the following month was a complete waste of time and effort and eventually I simply had to pay the penalty plus interest.

[Dave A]

An update.

I applied for a tax clearance certificate for the company concerned, and it was rejected due to the unpaid penalties and interest issue arising from this "late payment received" problem. So this morning I shot out to SARS to tackle the issue.

As everyone has indicated above, just show proof of (timeous) payment and request a waiver of the penalties and interest, and SARS is quite accommodating. However, it can take up to 7 days to get finalised - so if you're in this boat, don't leave it until you need a tax clearance certificate tomorrow (like I did). Fortunately I could get reprints of the current certificate which is still valid, much to the relief of the lass who was assisting me.

The urgency to resolve the issue though did lead to the manager coming through to assist - and they're pretty keen that I follow up with Standard Bank as to why it took 7 days to get the payment through to SARS.

Like myself, the manager is also concerned that it might have been a My Bills system problem that caused the delay, the consequences of which would apparently not be trivial. However, as far as he is aware, I am the first person to report and prove having had the problem.

Time to stir the pot with my bank manager, methinks.

If you know anyone who paid their EMP201 for the period 201408 via the Standard Bank My Bills system (particularly if it was released on 5th September), you might suggest they request an EMPSA via eFiling to ensure payment is reported and captured timeously on the SARS side.

[Dave A]

An update on this seems long overdue

As everyone has indicated above, just show proof of (timeous) payment and request a waiver of the penalties and interest, and SARS is quite accommodating. However, it can take up to 7 days to get finalised

Famous last words. As it turned out - I was being wildly optimistic.

My first application for waiver of penalties and interest was rejected "for lack of proof of payment". Specifically, a copy of the bank statement showing the transaction in question is not deemed a "proof of payment" as this does not prove that payment was made timeously.

I take it time travel has been discovered then - I just missed the news flash.

I was invited to resubmit an application with acceptable proof of timeous payment, plus I was also required to obtain a written explanation from Standard Bank as to why the funds were not paid over to SARS until 7 days later, and submit that letter with my application too.

(And when it came to time to submit, I kid you not - they were ticking off the requirements:
Letter from Standard Bank - check!)

As you might imagine, getting this letter from Standard Bank proved... Well, it took some persistence.
And when I did eventually get it, the letter stated plainly - their investigation showed that SARS received the funds on the same day it left our account, being 5th September 2014.

When I got it, I felt like the ant between two elephants. I knew SARS was certain that they only got the funds on the 12th. Now Standard Bank was certain SARS had got the funds on the 5th. How the heck was I supposed to break the looming deadlock?

So I asked Standard Bank for some supporting evidence.

What I got was a trail of email correspondence with logs that pretty much proved the case -
The money had transferred on time.
For some (pretty technical and documented) reason, SARS had only updated their records a week later.
The fault lay either with SARS, or something called ecentric.

A slam dunk you'd think.

Nope! SARS decides they'll waive the penalty, but not the interest!



For the most part I'm pretty good about keeping my cool, but it was damn tempting to appeal on principle.
But for R38 in interest?

In the end I've just paid the interst. Obviously SARS needs it more than I do.