Ziphozonke Lushaba

Problems with a new property transfer duty e-filing system introduced by the SA Revenue Service (Sars) this month are giving conveyancers headaches and delaying property transactions.

Adrian Lackay, a spokesman for Sars, denied there were any problems with the new system and maintained it was working normally. However, Jody van Broekhuizen, the chairman of the Pretoria Attorneys Association confirmed on Friday there were problems with the system although it was now working better than it had.

Van Broekhuizen said there was not any uniformity or standard turnaround time for transfer duty returns submitted to Sars, with some taking five days and others up to 20 days.

Sars banned manual transfer duty submissions when the new system went live on April 1.

Van Broekhuizen said the turnaround time of manual submissions used to be between seven and 10 days.

Property transactions are being delayed because a transfer duty certificate issued by Sars is required before a property can be transferred by the deeds office.

Andrew Golding, the president of the Institute of Estate Agents of South Africa (Ieasa) and chief executive of the Pam Golding Property Group was also aware of the problem with the new e-transfer duty system, adding that it was causing an up to 10-day delay in transfers.

“Anything that hampers or slows down the transfer process is something that as an industry we’d like to try and have alleviated as quickly as possible so delays can be cut down to a minimum for all parties.

“Given that estate agents are totally commission dependent, it makes financial planning more difficult when transfers are expected to take place on a certain date and then there are delays,” he said.

Van Broekhuizen added that documents could not be uploaded from the new system because it did not make any provision for this, there was nobody to discuss any issues with before lodging and if any transfer duty documentation was rejected, a refund had to first be requested, which took 21 days, before resubmitting.

He said there was nobody at Sars’ national call centre who knew anything about property transfer duties.

“The help available to us (conveyancers) is absolutely zero. There isn’t a call centre, help desk or contact person that we can ask for assistance.”

But Lackay said the Sars transfer duty e-filing system did not have any “known errors that could seriously cause problems for property transactions”.

Lackay said the turnaround time for Sars e-filing transfer duty applications was between five and 10 days and said claims that the system had collapsed or was not working were devoid of truth.

Problems being experienced were largely restricted to some “minor user errors” but call centre consultants had been trained to resolve these issues.

“If a specific issue needs to be addressed, please give us more details,” he said.

Lackay said certain hubs were formed by Sars where all e-transfer duty returns and transactions were processed and centralisation of these hubs would prevent any backlogs in the future. – Roy Cokayne