It is important you make sure that the personal details you have filed with the taxman are up to date and are correct. If you do not, there could be severe consequences for you.
Personal Finance recently dealt with a case where a taxpayer had changed from a Standard Bank account some years ago but did not provide the South African Revenue Service (SARS) with the new account details.
Standard Bank re-issued the account number to a new client, and SARS paid a R50 000 refund into the account number it had on hand.
Mark Kingon, SARS’s group executive in charge of business systems, says SARS cannot be held responsible for these payments.
The situation is worse for the errant taxpayer, because SARS cannot divulge to the taxpayer the details of the person who incorrectly received the rebate.
However, Kingon says SARS does follow up and tries to recover the money and, to the extent it does so, it will pay the taxpayer the due refund.
He says because the amount owed is not in terms of the Income Tax Act, the recovery steps in the Act can’t be used to get the money back.
SARS does sometimes struggle to trace the people to whom the money has incorrectly been paid.