PAYE BRS for 2022/23 Issued
Version 21.0.0 of the SARS PAYE Business Requirements Specification that provides the rules governing tax certificate layout and data has been issued and can be downloaded from the SARS web site using the following link:
SOUTH AFRICAN REVENUE SERVICE (sars.gov.za)
This latest specification must be used for the 2022/23 tax year as it includes the changes needed to provide for the tax amendments that are effective for the 2023 tax year. Payrolls must accumulate the data for the new fields specified from 1 March 2022. The changes made in version 21.0.0 are highlighted in green. Take note of the changes made to:
1.Reporting of directives
2.New code 3835 (long service awards) and related codes. We are still in discussion with SARS regarding aspects of the amendments to the long service awards and will publish the details in a Newsflash as soon as they are finalised. Regards,
Rob Cooper
Chairman Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER.

SARS Notice: Services during the Strike Action at SARS
The SARS notice follows. Regards,
Rob Cooper
Chairman Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER. SARS REMAINS OPEN FOR FURTHER ENGAGEMENT WITH LABOUR
Tshwane, 12 July 2022 – The South African Revenue Service (SARS) wishes to confirm that PSA and NEHAWU members have embarked on an industrial action as per the notice given by the union to SARS Management. The resumption of strike follows its temporary suspension by the PSA in May, and union leadership has indicated that they intend to remain on strike until SARS improves its wage offer. The dispute arose because of trade unions’ rejection of the available R70 million for baseline increases for bargaining unit employees. SARS has communicated that it does not decide on its own funding but is dependent on an annual allocation made through a process managed by National Treasury. The demand of labour of CPI plus 7% is simply unaffordable until the SARS receives further funding. SARS remain empathetic to financial challenges caused by increasing food and fuel prices as well as other essential services. These conditions affect majority of South Africans including SARS employees. SARS will always respect the constitutionally protected right of workers to strike within the strict provisions of the law, whilst at the same thing the necessary steps to fulfil its legal mandate and serve taxpayers and traders. The “no work, no pay” will apply for those employees that are participating in the industrial action. SARS can report that the first day of industrial action has seen minimal disruption to its services. While some of its branches had to close down due to absence of workers, overall taxpayers have continued to interact with the organization through the wide range of online services. SARS has rescheduled most of the appointments that have before the industrial action started. SARS has furthermore put business continuity plans and other contingencies in order to continue to deliver essential service to taxpayers. We urge the public to utilize our website for further updates on how to engage with SARS to fulfil their required obligations. Taxpayers are encouraged to avoid coming to a SARS office. SARS appeals to labour to remain peaceful in their protest and to respect picketing rules as specified in the CCMA Picketing Rules issued. SARS has demonstrated transparency in its financial position and willingness to engage the union leadership on ending the impasse. SARS has done everything in its power and within the available funding to extend the offer to trade unions, which remains available. SARS remains willing to continue engagements with the trade unions on the offer as well as the boarder Employee Value Proposition. For further information, please contact [email protected]

SARS EMP501 Reconciliation Webinar
SARS has issued an invitation to a webinar on the Employer Interim Reconciliation Declaration Filing Season. Details of the registration process and the invitation are copied below. Regards,
Rhona van Taak
Admin manager: Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER

Invitation to a webinar on Employer Interim Reconciliation Declarations Filing Season
Dear Employer
SARS is committed to assisting taxpayers and traders to fulfil their tax obligations and remain compliant. In this respect, SARS will host a virtual Webinar for employers, where the Employer Interim Declarations (EMP 501) Filing Season will be discussed. In terms of the Income Tax Act No.58 of 1962, employers are required to deduct the correct amount of tax from employees’ remuneration, pay this amount to SARS every month. Also ensure that SARS receives the Monthly Employer Declaration (EMP201) regularly on time as required. The deductions and payments are then reconciled through the completion of the Employer Reconciliation Declaration (EMP501). In addition, employers must issue final tax certificates (IRP5/IT3(a)’s) to employees within the prescribed time frames and requirements applicable to different employees and employers (certain employers must submit reconciliation documents to SARS before issuing tax certificates). In line with our strategic objectives, SARS believes that when taxpayers have clarity and certainty about their tax obligations, they will be in a better position to fulfill their legal obligations and be tax compliant. As an important stakeholder, you are invited to join us at the Webinar. You may also extend this invitation to other interested parties. The following topics will be covered:
Submission channels
General rules for import file structure
Validation rules updates
EMP501 reconciliation process
Webinar details:
Theme: Employer Interim Reconciliation Declarations Filing Season
Date: Thursday, 20 October 2022
Time: 17:00 – 19:00
Platforms (Virtual): Zoom and YouTube
Register in advance for this webinar on the following link:
https://sars-gov-za.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9yXBhdFIQdyPIBdRj9ECIg. Meeting ID: 982 0435 9129
Passcode: 589509
After registering, you will receive an email confirmation containing the logon information for the webinar and how to have your questions answered during the event. The webinar will also be recorded and posted on the SARSTV YouTube channel after the event. YouTube: https://youtu.be/T8WIzv3cCg8
If you have questions about Employer Interim Reconciliation Declarations, please send an email to [email protected]
Issued by:
PAYE Enabling and Design, and Taxpayer and Trader Education
6 October 2022

Compensation Fund Earnings Threshold for the 2022/23 Year of Assessment
Each year the Compensation Fund publishes the change to the earnings threshold in a Notice signed by the Commissioner and published in a Gazette. The threshold limits the earnings calculated by the payroll per employee from 1 March 2022 until 28 February 2023 to assist the employer to complete the annual Return of Earnings form (ROE or W.AS.8 return). After prompting from the PAGSA and explaining the urgency, earlier this week the Fund kindly provided me with the new earnings threshold (effective from 1 March 2022) and a copy of the Return of Earnings form. With statutory changes of this nature, I ere on the side of caution and prefer to wait for the Gazette notice. However, it seems that the Government printers are having difficulties, the notice of the increase has not yet been published in a Gazette, and it seemed pointless to delay the issue of this information any longer. Earnings Threshold for 2022/23
Having been assured by the Fund that the information provided was correct and that I could rely on it, in the interests of getting the information to you as quickly as possible, I decided to issue this Newsflash with the details. As can be seen from the Return of Earnings form in the appendix to this Newsflash, the earnings threshold for the 2022/23 year of assessment is R529 264, effective from 1 March 2022. General Matters
Dates for Return of Earnings Submission by Employers
As has been the practice for a number of years, the closing date for the submission of the Return of Earnings has been postponed from a 31 March date (as specified in the COID Act) to 31 May 2022. The Fund’s website will be opened to allow employers to submit their returns from 1 April 2022 until 31 May 2022. Year of Assessment Terminology: COID Regulation Gazette No. 44409 – 1 April 2021
The Department in Gazette No. 44409 of 1 April 2020 (‘yes’, April Fool’s day) clarified that the year in which the starting month falls, indicates the year of assessment. For example: the 2022 assessment year is the year starting 1st March 2022 and ending 28th February 2023. Those of us in the tax world who are used to the naming principle that the year of assessment is indicated by the year in which the ending month falls, will simply have to get used to the naming principle in the world of labour. Regards,
Rob Cooper
Chairman Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER. APPENDIX: RETURN OF EARNINGS
2021
CF-2A FORM: COMPENSATION FOR OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND DISEASES ACT 130 OF 1993
RETURN OF EARNINGS
Section A – Employer’s details
Name of Employer
CF Registration No
UIF Registration No
CIPC Registration No
SARS Tax No
Business Address
City/Town
Province
Postal Address
Code
Employer Telephone No
Mobile Telephone No
Employer’s email address
Consultant’s email address
Consultant’s Telephone No
SECTION B: Declaration of Earnings
CF Registration number:99
Actual Earnings:01/03/2021 – 28/02/2022
Provisional Earnings:01/03/2022- 28/02/2023
Month
Number of employees and amount of earnings (staff costs/salaries & wages) per month paid to all employees (excluding directors of a Company or members of a close corporation) up to a maximum of R 506 473 per person for the above period. Number of directors/members and amount of earnings (staff costs/salaries & wages) per month paid to directors of a Company or members of a Close Corporation up to a maximum of R 506 473 per person for the above period. Number of employees and amount of earnings (staff costs/salaries & wages) per month expected to be paid to all employees (excluding directors of a Company or members of a close corporation) up to a maximum of R 529 264 per person for the above period. Number of directors/members and amount of earnings (staff costs/salaries & wages) per month expected to be paid to directors of a Company or members of a Close Corporation up to a maximum of R 529 264 per person for the above period. (if applicable) in Rands. For Office Use Only

Employer Filing Season: Year ending February 2022
SARS has issued a notice in respect of the 2022 Employer Annual Filing Season. According to this notice, the filing season will commence on 1 April 2022 and ends on 31 May 2022. This include all your reconciliation related documents (EMP501 and Tax certificates) for the period 1 March 2021 to 28 February 2022. Please ensure that your Annual Reconciliation is submitted on or before 31 May 2022. To access the notice, please click on the link below:
PAYE Annual Reconciliation 2022 starts 1 April
Regards,
Rhona van Taak
Admin Manager Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER

Public holiday: :27 December 2022
The President has declared Tuesday, 27 December 2022 as a public holiday in lieu of Christmas day falling on a Sunday. The press statement with regards to this event can be found by using the following link:
https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-declares-27-december-public-holiday#:~:text=South%20Africans%20will%20enjoy%20Tuesday,Act%20No%2036%20of%201994). Regards,
Rhona van Taak
Admin Manager Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER

Company Tax: SARS notice on Supplementary IT14SD form
SARS has issued a notice with regards to the “Removal of the supplementary IT14SD form” when a company submits its income tax returns. The notice can be found below. Regards,
Rhona van Taak
Admin manager: Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER

Suspension of the UIF E-Compliance Certificate System
The electronic UIF Compliance Certificate system was developed without consulting third-party stakeholders such as the PAGSA and introduced without warning in late January 2021 to replace the manual system that had been in operation up until then. Problems were experienced almost immediately, and the number and types of problems escalated steadily from then until now. After many, many emails to the Fund highlighting the problems, and after many, many requests to meet with the senior management of the Fund to discuss how to resolve the problems, a meeting was finally scheduled for 12 April 2022. To inform the meeting, the Fund requested the PAGSA to submit a report on the difficulties that the PAGSA and its members (and their clients) had experienced since January 2021. This report is included in the Annexure to this Newsflash for your information. Announcement of the Suspension of the E-CC
Having discussed other reports, and halfway through the points in the PAGSA report, a legal representative of the Fund announced the decision to suspend the E-CC system to allow the Fund and third parties time to discuss the way forward. It appears that this decision had been made prior to the meeting, and later that day the E-Compliance Certificate website was closed with a message that the system had been suspended temporarily until further notice. From the web site you can now download a Circular letter with more details of the suspension and print it. Unfortunately this letter cannot be copied or saved (I have asked for such a version but at the time of writing this Newsflash, I had not received it) so it could not be added to the appendix. Important Points
Legislation
1.The completely re-written Unemployment Insurance Act (administered by the Fund) and the Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act (administered by SARS) came into operation during 2002. 2.Simplifying the requirements, the Unemployment Insurance Act (UI Act) puts a duty on employers to pay their contributions to SARS (or to the Fund) and to declare their employees to the Fund. 3.The UI Act does not provide for a prescription period, nor does it provide for an amnesty in any way to absolve declarations that were not made or were incomplete (with hindsight, this is perhaps a weakness in the UI Act). 4.The Fund, as the administrator of the UI Act, has a duty to ensure that employers comply with the provisions of the Act, including the monthly declaration of employee data. 5.The Fund is therefore within its legal rights to enforce the re-submission of missing declaration data. Only the timing and the method used by the Fund (i.e. withholding Compliance Certificates) to coerce employers to fill their ‘declaration gaps’ can be questioned. This summary indicates that in order to be able to change the E-CC system, the UI Act will probably have to be amended, and changing the law is a lengthy process. Suspension Circular Letter
The closing of the E-CC web site means that employers (including those that are compliant) can no longer be issued with a UIF Compliance Certificate. The Circular on the E-Compliance Certificate web site letter is therefore not addressed directly to employers, but to all:
Government Departments,
State Agencies,
Organs of State,
Business (public and private), and
Non-profit-making organisations,
to make them aware that the UIF Compliance Certificate will no longer be created, and that they must adjust their tender application rules to no longer expect such a document. It could take some time before the tender application rules are changed, so companies that tender must be prepared for this, and armed with the circular letter, inform the tender adjudicators that the absence of a UIF Compliance Certificate does not disqualify the tender application. What Now? The Fund has a duty to encourage and enforce compliance, so in the short term perhaps other methods of enforcement will be put into operation. New administration methods can assist in making the Fund more efficient and improving compliance. This is disturbing.

Budget Review 2023 – Chapter 4 ‘Statements of Intention’
PAGSA Newsflash 2023-11 explained the annual legislation amendment cycle and discussed the proposals that were issued in Annexure C of Budget 2023. The intention to make significant changes to the legislation and to administration requirements are stated in Chapter 4 of the Budget and are included verbatim below for discussion. Budget 2023 Intention: Two-pot retirement system
The intention behind the introduction the ‘two-pot’ retirement system and its postponement to 1 March 2024, is stated in Chapter 4 of the Budget as follows. Following extensive public consultation, the first phase of legislative amendments to the retirement system is due to take effect on 1 March 2024. The intent of these amendments is to enable pre-retirement access to a portion of one’s retirement assets, while preserving the remainder for retirement. Retirement fund contributions will remain deductible up to R350 000 per year or 27.5 per cent of taxable income per year – whichever is lower. Permissible withdrawals from funds accrued before 1 March 2024 will be taxed according to the lump sum tables. Withdrawals from the “savings pot” before retirement will be taxed at marginal rates. On retirement, any remaining amounts in the savings pot will be taxed according to the retirement lump sum table (for example, R550 000 is a tax-free lump sum on retirement). Four areas required additional work: a proposal for seed capital, legislative mechanisms to include defined benefit funds in an equitable manner, legacy retirement annuity funds and withdrawals from the retirement portion if one is retrenched and has no alternative source of income. The first three matters will be clarified in forthcoming draft legislation. The final matter will be reviewed as a second phase of implementation. PAGSA Comments
The purpose of the ‘two-pot’ retirement system is to improve pre-retirement preservation of the retirement interest and was proposed to be made effective from 1 March 2023. The requirements of the ‘two-pot’ system impact more on retirement fund employers than on commercial employers, requiring significant changes to their systems but equally importantly, to their infrastructure and internal procedures. It was also discovered during the 2022 amendment cycle that there are four areas of related legislation that need to be addressed (see above). For all these reasons, the two-pot system has been postponed to 1 March 2024 to allow the additional changes to the legislation to be made, and to give retirement fund administrators more time to prepare their organisations. Budget 2023 Intention: Broadening the personal income tax base. The intention to broaden the personal income tax base is stated in Chapter 4 of the Budget as follows. As part of exploring the effect of remote work on the personal income tax regime, the National Treasury and SARS committed to a multi-year review of allowances. A discussion document will be released this year to outline workplace practices and policies, changes in the current environment and how different workplaces are affected by home office and travel allowance policies. PAGSA Comments
The intention stated in Budget 2023 to investigate home office allowances, and in particular travel allowances, with a view to changing their requirements is a welcome and positive step forward. For many years the PAGSA has submitted requests to National Treasury to investigate and make changes to travel allowances (we have also submitted suggested changes), and in 2020, because of the Covid lockdowns and the subsequent spotlight on ‘working from home’, we also requested changes to home office allowances. Our requests surfaced for the first time in the 2021 Budget that spoke to a “multi-year” intention to review travel and home office allowances, but as far as can be determined, the investigation was not started. The fact that the 2021 Budget proposal has been included again in Budget 2023 signals intention. Non-compliance, whether deliberate or inadvertent, is high.

UIF Notice: Retraction of the Manual UI-19 Discontinuation Notice
Background
Without warning or discussion with business partners such as the PAGSA, the Fund announced during September that manual UI-19 forms would no longer be accepted by labour centers in Gauteng from 1 October 2022. Besides a vague reference to uFiling in the notice, no credible alternative solution was discussed with business prior to the issue of the discontinuation notice. Refer to PAGSA Newsflash 2022-45 for more details of the notice. Discussions
The PAGSA immediately notified the Fund of the extensive difficulties, uncertainty, and confusion experienced by payroll suppliers and employers resulting from the discontinuation notice, and also pointed out the lack of a credible alternative solution. I am pleased to bring to your attention that the Fund has withdrawn the UI-19 discontinuation notice with effect from today (21 October 2022), and “apologises to clients, employers, and stakeholders for any inconvenience caused by the circular”. The full notice of retraction is copied at the end of this Newsflash for your information. During the latest discussions with the Fund, I repeated my previous requests:
1.To revive the technical discussions that took place during 2016 and 2017 to update the E03 declaration specification that payrolls must obey when creating the monthly declaration file with a view to modernising the requirements as well as providing the additional employee data that the Fund needs in order to fulfil its legal mandate. 2.To discuss the creation of a practical and credible solution to replace the UIF E-Compliance Certificate online system that was introduced towards the end of January 2021 (again without prior notification or discussion with business partners such as the PAGSA). After many requests and eventually the submission to the Fund by the PAGSA of a report detailing the weaknesses of the E-CC system and the resulting negative impact on business and the economy in general, this system was also withdrawn during a discussion with the PAGSA and other parties on 11 April 2022. Refer to PAGSA Newsflash 2022-18 for more details and the full PAGSA report. As soon as more information becomes available, you will be updated. Regards,
Rob Cooper
Chairman Payroll Authors Group of South Africa
All information provided by the PAGSA is subject to our DISCLAIMER. Employment and Labour on UIF withdrawing Gauteng circular on the discontinuance of accepting Manual UI-19 forms
21 Oct 2022
UIF withdraws Gauteng circular on the discontinuance of accepting Manual UI-19 forms
The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has, with immediate effect, withdrawn the circular that was shared in Gauteng declining to accept manual UI-19 forms from clients. The UI-19 is a form that confirms the employment status and history, as well as the salary and hours worked by an employee. The UIF apologises to clients, employers, and stakeholders for any inconvenience caused by the circular. The Fund also assures clients that it will continue accepting the submission of manual UI-19 forms at all labour centres. However, clients are also encouraged to visit https://ufiling.labour.gov.za/uif/ to submit their Unemployment, Illness, Maternity, and Adoption benefit claims. Employers can also use uFiling to declare their workers, including foreign employees, and pay monthly contributions. If and when the Fund considers going fully paperless, the decision will be communicated by the UIF Commissioner, Teboho Maruping, after thorough consultations with clients, employers, and critical stakeholders. The Fund remains committed to rendering excellent services. NOTICE ENDS
Annexure: Unemployment Insurance Act Section 56
56. Information to be supplied by employer.—
(1) Every employer must, as soon as it commences activities as an employer, provide the information referred to in subsection (2) regarding its employees to the Commissioner, irrespective of the earnings of such employees.