Caseware Africa, a division of Adapt IT, has released details of its latest innovation, Individual Tax. This additional app on the CloudTax platform facilitates the preparation, calculation, and submission of individual tax returns (ITR12).
“It is estimated that the majority of tax practitioners spend between 75% to 90% of their time gathering information and documents in preparation of tax returns”, says Michael Mncube, Tax Product Manager, Caseware Africa .“This together with ensuring that accurate, high-quality tax returns are submitted to SARS on time, often leaves very little room to optimise the efficiency of the methodology and improve the process that the practice follows.”
Mncube says gathering tax data using hard copies, client collaboration via countless emails and phone calls, is both tedious and daunting. “This entire process results in long and delayed response times. The use of Excel spreadsheets to calculate and corroborate numbers, a multitude of disconnected datasets used by tax teams, plus the resulting errors, are all compounded when needing to submit each tax return, per taxpayer individually as well – leading to an inefficient and time consuming process,” he says.
“Individual Tax offers unsurpassed efficiencies as the collection of tax data for specific tax years is achieved via digital queries that then automatically store the information in the relevant sections of the return – saving significant time and effort” notes Mncube. Individual Tax offers a centralised data storage in a single format, a comprehensive tax calculation framework aligned to SARS, powerful overviews of tax-related balances and the ability to prepare both IRP6 and ITR12 returns in a single solution. “This new addition to our CloudTax suite offers a multitude of benefits including the presentation of a clear view of provisional and income tax returns, together with related values grouped per tax year – all a single view allowing reconciliations of submissions and assessments.”
Additional features include built-in schedules that facilitate the summary of tax data inputs and auto-calculation of totals, thus, eliminating human error. “It also caters for bulk submission of tax returns to SARS, saving additional time and further enhancing efficiency. Seamless annual updates empower practitioners with peace of mind by ensuring that the latest changes in tax legislation and compliance are incorporated,” says Mncube.
CloudTax integrates directly with SARS efiling, which automatically synchronises all taxpayer details and historical correspondence in bulk, into a one-stop centralised location for fast and easy access. Built-in dashboards ensure that deadlines are never missed and that efforts can be directed to the most urgent action items. “By managing all client contact information in one place, practitioners can collaborate directly with taxpayers from within the platform.
“Powered by Caseware Cloud, CloudTax is always available from any location, on any device, at any time and is included when customers buy Individual Tax,” Mncube concludes.
