SARS failures to provide proper notification to taxpayers

SARS - failure by SARS to give notification to taxpayer of penalty, thereby resulting in taxpayer having to pay a penalty that accumulated to more than R10 000 and a liability to SARS of over R15 000 for interest.

Without noticification to the taxpayer, in November 2022 SARS imposed a R250 penalty for not filing a return for 2022. In each of the 38 months thereafter a further R250 penalty was added , again without any notification to the taxpayer. Only in March 2025 did the taxpayer become aware for the first time of all the penalties when a letter of demand was received from SARS for payment of an amount in excess of R10 000 in respect of all the penalties that had accumulated.

But, not only did SARS fail to give the taxpayer notification of all these penalties until SARS sent the letter of demand more than two years after the first amount of the penalties was imposed. SARS had also failed to give the taxpayer notification of the requirement of SARS that the taxpayer file a return for 2022. The taxpayer had not for each of the 20 years preceding 2022 not been required to file returns, as in 1998 the taxpayer had received a notification from SARS advising that the taxpayer was not required to file returns, the reason being that the only income received by the taxpayer was from dividends issued by companies on the JCI. Therefore, SARS would be obligated to give the taxpayer notification of SARS change in requiring that for 2022 the taxpayer was required to file a return. Had the taxpayer been so notified, the matter would have been attended to and there would have been no penalties and a considerable saving to the taxpayer.