A Conveyancer’s Diary

When conveyancers (and their assistants) panic


In most transfers of properties, Transfer Duty is payable. In order to obtain the Transfer Duty receipt, certain documents are lodged at the applicable SA Revenue Services offices. We usually send our documents plus the cheque in favour of SARS, to our Pietermaritzburg agents, who then lodge these documents at the Pietermaritzburg SARS offices.

Last week we were told that SARS is no longer accepting physical i.e. paper, submission of documents and that all transfer duty receipts had to be applied for using the SARS e-Filing system. We then also found out that the e-Filing was not working so well (meaning: delays) and this was confirmed in a circular by John Christie, conveyancer of Pietermaritzburg.

Time to hit the panic buttons, we thought.

Then we received some reprieve in the form of an e mail from SARS, Pietermaritzburg telling us that an extension has been granted to 31st March 2011.

Now, I have no difficulty in going the e-Filing route, provided it works. And, it sure would have been nice if SARS could have given us some advance warning as to the cut-off date of physical paper submissions.

Regards
Sieg



Quote:

Talking of the early days of M-Net in South Africa:

“Central to M-Net’s strategy was the purchase of a decoder by the end user, which allowed the channel’s signal to be unscrambled. Since decoders were initially handmade and rare, the plan was to market them first to hotels and then to apartment buildings, where a single decoder could service multiple living units. But a major obstacle came in the form of the body corporate that governed the apartment blocks. They required a 90 per cent approval vote from members to charge residents in the building for the new pay-tv service, a majority that proved impossible to secure” [The author continues to suggest that this nearly led to the demise of the then fledgling M-Net. The 90 percent approval that she refers to, is presumably to a “unanimous resolution” in terms of the Sectional Titles Act and presumably is to the old 1971 Act as the current 1986 Act gives unanimous resolutions as an 80% figure.]

From the section on “Koos Bekker” by Cheryl Uys-Allie in South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs, compiled by Moky Makura, 2010, at p.62.