On Monday, 4 June, acting SARS Commissioner, Mark Kingon, announced that the 2018 tax filing season will open on 1 July 2018, but will be shorted by three weeks. The announcement of the shortened filing season, aimed at improving efficiency, allows additional time for SARS, taxpayers and the tax fraternity in general, to deal with all tax verifications before the December holiday break.

Mr Kingon also noted some key findings in respect of the 2016 and 2017 tax years where it was noted that approximately 1.8 million and 1.6 million taxpayers respectively submitted tax returns when they were not required to do so on the basis that such taxpayers earned a single source of income from one employer. Furthermore in the 2016 and 2017 tax years a total of 935 269 and 868 562 registered eFilers opted to submit their returns at the SARS branch and approximately 132,000 and 120,000 returns respectively were submitted by tax practitioners at the SARS branch rather than eFiling.

In an effort to make the filing season more efficient SARS have committed to send out notifications to persons who are not required to submit a return and to encourage taxpayers and tax practitioners to submit returns on eFiling rather than at the SARS branch.

The 2018 tax filing season will now start on 1 July 2018 for eFilers, while the SARS branches will assist taxpayers from 2 July 2018. The filing season will end on October 31 for non-provisional taxpayers.

Deadlines for manual and provisional taxpayers

The deadlines for submission are as follows:

Who is completely exempt from submitting a tax return?

A taxpayer does not need to submit a return if all the following criteria apply:

• • The taxpayer’s total employment income/salary for the year of assessment (March 2017-February 2018) before tax was no more than R350 000.
  • Employment income/salary for the year of assessment was received from one employer.
  • The taxpayer has no other form of income, such as:
    • car allowance or company car fringe benefit
    • business income,
    • taxable interest
    • rental income
    • income from another job.
  • The taxpayer does not want to claim for any additional allowable tax related deductions or rebates, such as:
    • medical expenses,
    • retirement fund contributions,
    • travel expenses

Please feel free to contact us should you have any questions related to the 2018 tax season.