SARS eFiling season opens for employers
South African employers are required to reconcile and submit Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), and Skills Development Levy (SDL) contributions for the period 1 March 2013 – 28 February 2014.
That’s the word from Sage Pastel, a South African developer of payroll and HR software systems, in a press release issued on Tuesday, 29 April 2014.
To ensure you meet all the requirements, Pastel recommended that employers follow these guidelines:
1. Download the latest version of e@syFile Employer system
“It’s critical that companies download and install this software before conducting their PAYE, SDL and UIF reconciliations to ensure accuracy and compliance with SARS requirements,” said Madelein van der Watt, development manager at Sage Pastel Payroll & HR.
Should you use a previous version of the e@syFile Employer system, your submission will not be accepted by SARS, Van der Watt said.
2. Back up your current information
The installation may delete the current information, so make sure you back up your current information before installing the new version of e@syFile Employer.
3. Include individual income tax reference numbers on your tax certificates
SARS requires that tax certificates include the individuals’ personal income tax reference numbers.
The e@syFile Employer system will generate warnings for each tax certificate without the required income tax reference number specified, indicating that potentially, penalties will be raised if this information is omitted from the final submission data.
4. Claim your Employee Tax Incentive (ETI)
If your company is claiming ETI, remember to include SIC codes and the value of the ETI you have claimed for the first two months of the ETI year. Also, you will need to include a new deduction source code and comply with new validations specific to ETI.
If you are using an automated payroll solution, it will generate tax certificates with the new ETI source code already consolidated and included in the CSV export for e@syFile.
5. Submit your reconciliations before 31 May 2014
During the year-end procedures, the electronic tax certificates are generated automatically in the IRP5.14 file format if you make use of automated payroll solutions.
This file can be imported directly into the e@syFile Employer system and the payroll EMP501 Reconciliation Report to complete the PAYE, SDL and UIF reconciliations.
Van der Watt emphasised that this will save considerable time and cost compared to manual calculation and capturing to complete the PAYE reconciliation submission twice a year.
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