I now also have a tax guru

The receiver of revenue and I have always been on pretty good terms. I pay my tax, submit my return and when I get my refund I usually go Christmas shopping with it. In general I keep my nose clean with them, and they don’t give me any hassles.

However the last few years there have been some disturbances in the force. It all started in 2006 when I quit a very long standing employment arrangement in something similar to hell and took a few months worth of mental health days.

Then last year when I packed up all my worldly belongings and moved to Cape Town for a year, working for a salary which was probably the smallest I’ve ever had since I started working in 1997! (Still, I learnt a lot there – so as far as I’m concerned it was worth it in the skills I picked up and fantastic people I met).

Then roll around 2009, the economic recession, the inevitable letting go from my new JHB job and then finding out I was pregnant just after I secured a contracting position which has no set income and depends exclusively on how many hours I manage to clock.

The receiver of revenue must be looking at me and thinking I’ve gone off the deep end? Ad to this that I didn’t actually submit a return last year because firstly all my paperwork and tax certificates were still in boxes after my move back to JHB and secondly because I figured that I probably didn’t earn above the level where you HAVE to submit so I’d just rather leave it.

Now from November (20th I think) SARS is getting a bit stricter on tax returns. Apparently they now get to charge you R250 – R16 000 per month for a late return, regardless if you owe them or if they owe you. And they now also have the power to just nab the money from your account if they see it there looking lost and unallocated.

I decided I needed a tax guru – and I needed one fast. It was time to restore my previous good standing with SARS.

Through a recommendation of a friend I found Zander who will now be known far and wide as MY tax guru. The man is simply a genius. I took my sad story and a box full of tax certificates and receipts to him on Monday and he’s already managed to sort out my last two returns, get an error fixed on the return before that and arrange a payout for me that came through this morning (a payout that is roughly 3 times as big as I was expecting on top of that – and I’m not complaining). And everything is completely legit. I don’t mind paying tax – I just mind paying more than I’m supposed to.

It’s nice to be up to date and have a clean nose with the receiver again. I really don’t ever want to be on their bad side, that’s for sure. If you need a tax guru I can highly recommend Zander and he’s not even paying me to say that, promise.