Eish! SARS make life so difficult.

They have a lovely website on www.sars.gov.org

Go there, log in, select Trust Registration.

Then get down to business. They want to know:

for every beneficial owner.

If there are only two of you, well, that won’t work because they insist on at least one Founder, one Trustee and one Beneficiary.

OK, so you meticulously fill in all that, then they want similar information about you as the person requesting the registration.

You fill that in as well.

By the time you have finished you will have completed 39 entries.

You hit Submit and guess what? The submission gets declined because the data you have supplied does not match that which they have on record.

But here’s the crazy part. They don’t tell you where the mismatch is.

It could be any one of those 39 entries and you’ve got to guess which one.

It could be that the Trust number must not be preceded by “IT”. Let’s try that. 39 entries later. Sorry, you guessed wrong.

Maybe I should miss out the “/”s in the trust number. 39 entries later. Sorry, try again.

Maybe include the “IT” but with no “/”s. Nope.

So after 156 entries, you give up. Now what? You must book a meeting with SARS and wait about 2 weeks to complete the application with a representative. That’s OK for you, because you’ve only got one trust. We serve hundreds!

I sent a query to SAICA, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. Two days later I got a call from a SARS specialist. She undertook to talk me through the online registration. What did I learn?

It’s the trust number with IT but no “/”s and no (G)

My name had to be entered as Derek Springett, not Derek Peter Springett.

But my wife’s name had to be Helen Margaret Springett, not Helen Springett.

We tried 5 times on two platforms, Chrome and Edge. That’s  195 entries, and the same result every time.

The problem has been “escalated”. Whoopee!