If you make payments to the South African Revenue Service (SARS) via a SARS drop box, make sure that you do so before 3pm in order for the payment to be registered on the same day.
From May 1, payments dropped off at SARS offices after 3pm will be registered only the following day and will incur late payment penalties and interest if applicable.
Previously, SARS allowed you to make drop-off payments after-hours and even on weekends. For example, if your payment was due on a Friday, you could place it in a drop-box at a SARS office on Sunday. Although received by SARS staff on Monday, it would have been dated as received on the previous Friday when it was due.
“The long-standing practice of regarding payments deposited at a SARS office after working hours on a particular day as having been received that day is over. The change was announced in a Government Gazette notice earlier this month,” Bernard Sacks, a tax partner at global audit, tax and advisory firm Mazars, says.