SARS gets new powers to enforce payment

People and companies, such as lawyers, estate agents and medical aid funds, now had a duty to automatically submit information about their clients to SARS according to a report in The Times.

The powers were reportedly gazetted last month and followed provisions of last year's Tax Administration Act, which allows certain high-ranking SARS officials to authorise searches without warrants.

"Ask anyone in the taxation sector and they will tell you SARS is much more aggressive," SA Institute of Professional Accountants national tax committee chairman Ettiene Retief told the newspaper.

"One of the biggest changes in the new Tax Administration Act was the broadening of the scope of the information SARS could request," he said.

SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay reportedly confirmed the new regulations.

"SARS can request any information from a bank account of a taxpayer as part of its third-party data verification," he told The Times.

It was increasingly using intelligence gathered through more than half a decade of e-filing "to aggressively patch the holes in the tax net," SA Institute of Tax Practitioners chief executive Stiaan Klue told the newspaper.

Source: The Times via I-Net Bridge