As an employee in South Africa, your IRP5 is candidly important to you for several good reasons. This is one of the proofs that you are a law-abiding citizen, since every eligible person is required to pay tax in the country. Therefore, your IRP5 is your tax certificate given you by your employer at the end of each tax year in South Africa. But what happens if you should lose your IRP5 for any reason?
Should this be the case, there are different things to do. You can contact your old employer and ask for a copy from them. And if this can’t happen for any reason (maybe the firm you used to work for is no longer in existence), then you can approach a police station and swear an affidavit. If you still work there however, you can also download your IRP5 online.
What To Do If I Lost My IRP5
These are three major things we can recommend):
A. Contact Your Employer
You should be aware already that the law requires every employer in the country to make preparations for the tax certificate of each of their employees. In other words, it is your boss who will reach out to SARS and work towards doing all that should be done for your IRP5. And when it is set, your employer receives the hard copy of the tax certificate on your behalf, before handing it out to you.
The point is, you can always discuss with them whenever you discover you no longer have access to the tax certificate, and they can help out. Even if you are no longer working for them, you can still go back to your former place of work and see what way they could be of help to you.
B. Swear An Affidavit
Let’s say your former work place is no longer in existence, then what should you do? Very simple. You can decide to go to a police station to swear an affidavit to this effect with ease. You see, it is no much of a big deal if you discovered that you have lost your IRP5 (it happens). As long as you have all you ought to have, you can easily get an affidavit.
C. Download From Your SARS eFiling Profile:
How can you download your IRP5 from your SARS efiling profile? Simply follow these steps:
Step One: Open the SARS offical website with either your smartphone or PC. Log in to your SARS efiling which you can always have access to with the right credentials. This should not be much of a big deal as far as you have good internet and you used a working Web browser.
Step Two: Once it is done loading, simply select returns issued. This of course is located at the left side of the page.
Step Three: Select Personal income tax (ITR12) on the drop-down to get closer to getting the whole process done. Select and open the already requested tax year on the list.
Step Four: Also, there is a possibility of selecting the tax year and then request the return. To get this done, you simply have to check the top right of the page.
At this point, it is necessary to note that this procedure will easily work if you are still with an employer who has rendered the IRP5 to SARS from their own side. If you should follow these steps judiciously, you can always retrieve your IRP5 at ease anytime you want to. And if after following the steps you still discovered that you can’t get it, you can simply select the Refresh data button. After doing this, simply wait for the page to finish loading before ticking the IRP5 data box and then press OK.
The Necessity Of Your IRP5
Tax issues in South Africa has a whole lot to do with laid down law and civic obligations. Hence, every eligible citizen is expected to pay their tax as at when due. Also, SARS, the agency in charge of IRP5, is backed by the law. So, the law has empowered the agency to be the one to receive all details from employers to determine what the taxes of their employees would be. Hence, only the agency can give an employer the hard copy of their employee’s IRP5.
Usually, as a tax year comes to an end (as already structured), another tax filling season will start, and eligible workers will be able to submit their Tax Returns to SARS. The law insists full compliance with all that concerns tax, and proofs are necessary too. Therefore, it is necessary to always have your IRP5 with you, and should take necessary steps to retrieve it if you should lose it at any point in time.
In Conclusion
When people wonder what they should do if they should lose their IRP5, it is actually very reasonable, particularly as we should consider the importance of having a physical proof that they are really faithful with their tax and are on the side of the government on this path.
Of course, we should be familiar already with the necessity and essence of tax when it comes to societal development. When everyone is faithful with their taxes, the government can have access to more resources to put in place adequate structures and infrastructure which citizens can enjoy and benefit from. We can start talking about functional healthcare systems, good public schools, and a whole host of others.
Therefore, every developed country around the world has been able to put in place appropriate structures when it comes to the affairs of tax and similar activities. There are no exemptions in South Africa too, which is one of the importance of the IRP5. Therefore, when you are faithful with your taxes as an employee, it is only necessary to have a proof via your certificate. But what to do if you lost your IRP5 has been explained already, and the ball is now in your courts.