A nightmare situation for many South African taxpayers is discovering after their year-end tax assessment that the PAYE they paid on various income streams during the year was not enough. The result is a substantial tax debt, which can often not be settled in time to prevent hefty late payment penalties and interest.
To avoid this happening, taxpayers with multiple incomes can request PAYE to be deducted at a higher rate than the normal tax rate during the year. In fact, from 1 March, SARS will do this automatically for pensioners with multiple incomes.
In this article we discover why there is often a tax shortfall even when PAYE is deducted from multiple income streams, and how to avoid this in future.