How to set up SARS eFiling for Business

With eFiling, your return can be filed in a matter of minutes from the comfort of your own home. The system is very useful but can be very tricky when you have not familiarised yourself with it. Information on how to register yourself for tax types is available but is hidden among a mountain of other official SARS documents that might take you a good while to sift through.

This walkthrough help you with setting your SARS profile up so you can file your income tax returns.

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Step 1: Login to Efiling

This step assumes that you have registered. If not, you can register for an eFiling profile on the eFiling website.

Step 2: Choose the correct user from Taxpayer List

If you have already registered for EFiling in your individual capacity, you have to choose the specific user for each business that you would like to do efiling for. This is an easy step to overlook because there are options for organisation in your individual profile and the profiles for business and individual are identical if you have activated organization functionality. So make sure that you are in the profile of the business that you want to do the return for.

Step 3: Click “Organisations”

This is the second tab from the right in the top menu. It is the same menu you initially used to add the user profile for the business. When you press it, there will be six tabs under it that are dark orange in colour. Normally, the top tab named “Organizations” is automatically opened. If not, click it and you will get a dropdown list of all the options related to tax for your organizations.

Step 4: Click “Organisation Tax Types”

In the dropdown list, Organisations is the fourth from the top. Clicking this will open up a list of all the tax types that you have authorization to access. For practitioners, a business owner might limit which tax types they have access to. As a business own you will likely have all of them available. If you click “Organisation Tax Types” and nothing shows up, you have not been authorized to access that information. If the business was registered by you, you will have to activate the different tax types yourself before you can file.

Step 5: Click on the check box for all applicable Tax Types

To choose tax types that you want to be able to file returns for, click the check box to the left of each option, and type in the tax number for your business, and your tax office of choice. The two that apply to all businesses are Organisation Income Tax (ITR14) and Provisional Tax (IRP6) so choose those two at the least and any others that apply to your business.

Step 6: Click on “Register”

After you have registered for the different tax types you will get a status message near the middle of the screen that says “Awaiting Registration Verification”. This verification process takes 48 hours. When the process completes, you will get an email notification saying that verification was successful or rejected. If it was rejected, the email will state the reason for rejection and the status message in Organisation Tax Types will indicate “Rejected” (see troubleshooting tips below for possible remedy).

If the verification is successful you will get an email notifying you. If you don’t get the email, you can check the status message and it should read “Successfully Activated”.

You are now good to go and can file returns for your company through eFiling.

There are different tax types that taxpayers can register for. In order to have your tax types show up in your profile, you can authorise users including yourself and anyone else who will do tax for you.

In the event of everything not going smoothly, here are a few things that I found that might be helpful.

Trouble Shooting Tips

• If your tax type verification is rejected due to incorrect information, try to reenter the tax number again and then register again. There might be a space in the tax number that was put in, whether before or after, even if it doesn’t show when you highlight the text (which was the case with my)
• A change in banking details that is not reflected on SARS side can also be a cause for rejection due to incorrect information.
• The easiest way to solve issues on eFiling is through the call centre. All call centre agents I have talked to are well-trained and
  helped me solved the issues I had on different occasions within one
  call. Between waiting on hold at different times of the day and having my
  query resolved, it never took more than 30 minutes.
• The number
  SARS HelpLine is an 0800 number so it is toll free if you are calling
  from a landline or have access to a Telkom mobile number.
• If you want hands on step by step help, Help Me eFile is a useful feature. It allows you to share the screen with the call center agent the can direct you with their mouse to where everything is. Full Help Me eFile is, however, only available for individual profiles. In the business profile it will not allow them to access sensitive company information.

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Did you find this information helpful? If you enjoyed reading the article or want to share your own tips, let leave a comment below.

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