To cut a long story short I used to own a company which I had to close as it wasn't making money. SARS has recently come back to me and says I owe them 20 k. Unfortunately I don't have that sun of money so wanted to arrange a payment plan. What a nightmare. I have been shunted between various call centres with no success. I would like to pay off this debt but it seems like SARS would prefer this not to be the case. If this isn't resolved soon then I'm going to not even bother.

As i'm typing this, I'm still waiting for Christopher at the SARS call centre to get a manager on the line. I've been on hold for 32minutes and 47 seconds now and feel that by the time I'm done typing this, I'll still be waiting. I filed my tax return in November last year at the Randburg tax office. I was told that due to a systems problem, they could not capture my banking details - odd I thought, as they paid my retun into my bank account the previous year - but i accepted it anyway and returned a week later with a bank statement that they asked me to provide.Now, being that it was their error that caused this situation, I assumed that it should be corrected in little or no time. I was wrong. After calling the call centre about 8 times to ask them to expidite the payment, i was told that the matter would be escalated to have the payment made sooner that the turn around time of 21 days -the last time I spoke to a 'manager' by the name of Alvin, who assured me that that this would be escalated. By the end of that call I had resigned myself to the fact that absolutely no effort would be made to help me and that I should just wait the 21 days. WHICH I NOW HAVE ! with no payment !

I submitted my tax return in person at Newlands SARS branch, Pretoria in November 2008. Waited for 2 hours in line-up. When it was my turn to see official, the power went off & they could not tell us how long it will be off. Official who helped us promised he would submit our return the moment the power is back. Needless to say it never happened. I left for Canada in Dec 2008 on a work contract and tried to get information from SARS. Cannot reach anyone and have been kept on hold for more than 40 minutes at a time. There were many efforts since Decembe2008-August 2009 to get somebody at SARS to respond. At last there was reply from SARS requesting supporting documents with a deadline. It was send to my previous postal address AFTER I changed my address, my 2008 retun had my new address on and I confirmed with the official where I submitted my return to make sure they have the new address. I scanned the requested documents, e-mailed to my daughter who gave it in at SARS Newlands. Now they say it will take 1 year to finalize return. They owe me money. SARS should pay interest if they don't pay your money back in time. Very bad service.Wonder where my 2009 return is. Get no response.