SARS disallowed the taxpayers home office expenses during the ITR12 2018 assessment. The reasons they gave had to do with calculations which is addressed in the NOO. Now SARS is requesting substantiating documents which is effectively a 2nd verification.
Important:
This answer is based on tax law for the tax year ending 28 February 2017.
Answer:
We need to know why SARS requires the documents. You may well be correct that they are staring a new audit (or review here) and we agree that that would not be correct.
Rule 8 allows for SARS to request for substantiating documents after the taxpayer lodged an objection. We copied the relevant sub-rules below:
Rule 8:
(1) Within 30 days after delivery of an objection, SARS may require a taxpayer to produce the additional substantiating documents necessary to decide the objection.
(2) The taxpayer must deliver the documents within 30 days after delivery of the notice by SARS.
If this was the reason why SARS requested it, we would suggest that you make the relevant material available. This would be our suggestion even if the relevant material was made available earlier.
This would also be necessary if “the documents required to substantiate the grounds of objection that the taxpayer has not previously delivered to SARS for purposes of the disputed assessment” – see rule 7(2)(b)(iii). SARS would normally treat the objection as invalid in these instances and one would then, in the amended objection, provide the relevant material.