Making appointments with the South African Revenue Service
In order for us to resolve any tax issues we may be experiencing; we have to make an appointment with the South African Revenue Service (hereafter referred to as “SARS”).
We make a SARS appointment as a Tax Practitioner on behalf of our client. SARS has an online booking system where we go to on the SARS website to make this appointment. When booking a SARS appointment, we now need to provide all the relevant supporting documents to SARS when making this appointment. So, unless we have all the documents we need for your tax issue, we cannot book a SARS appointment. The documents include a valid, signed SARS power of attorney in the Tax Practitioners name.
When booking the SARS appointment, we are given the first available appointment date by SARS. We cannot give SARS a date and time for the appointment. We choose a date and time based on availability.
We are only allowed to book a SARS appointment using the Tax Practitioners registration number. A Tax Practitioner may only make one SARS appointment at a time and is only allowed to book a new SARS appointment after they have had the current one. For example, if I book a SARS appointment today using my Tax Practitioner number, I will receive a SARS appointment in about two to three months’ time from today, depending on availability and whether its tax season or not. I therefore cannot book another SARS appointment and will have to wait two to three months before booking a new SARS appointment using my Practitioner number. On average a Tax Practitioner is only able to assist four clients per year per Tax Practitioner. This is problematic for us (as well as our clients!) as we don’t only have four clients!
We are very fortunate to have more than one Tax Practitioner working at Northbound. We therefore utilize all our Tax Practitioners registration numbers to make SARS appointments. We, unfortunately, don’t have nearly enough Tax Practitioner registration numbers for all our tax issues. There is always appointment booked at any given time. Once we have had SARS appointment, we check our SARS appointment list, and we attend to the next most urgent tax issue, (I know, it’s all urgent!), from a company perspective.
The problem is when we became aware of a new tax issue and it is extremely urgent, we at all times have four SARS appointments booked. We therefore need to wait till our next SARS appointment, so we can finalise that appointment before we can make the next one. The date for that appointment will be in two or three months’ time. Sadly, there is nothing else we can do from our side to expedite the matter. However, as the Public Officer, you are able to interact with SARS on behalf of your company, close corporation or trust. You can call the SARS call centre and request an appointment with SARS. Once you have secured the SARS appointment, we will assist you with the relevant documentation. Your appointment date might even be after our appointment date as the general public books SARS appointment throughout South Africa.
SARS no longer allow walk ins by the general public since March 2020 (Covid time) and have stuck with this principle. Gone are the days we would queue at SARS to sort out something quickly.
Times have changed and with that so has technology. We are allowed to do a lot more things on SARS efiling than we were able to before and some of the tasks on SARS efiling have improved greatly. However, there are times when you just need to speak to someone to have it sorted out. For that to happen, we need to make a SARS appointment.
By Laverne Geswint – GTP (SA)
General Tax Practitioner
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