SARS sets a good example
by Andrew Smith on 27/02/07 at 9:29 am
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Yesterday I received this e-mail from SARS, presumably because I’m signed up to e-filing:
Dear Mr Andrew Smith
The last day of February marks the end of tax year for individual taxpayers.
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) would like to remind all taxpayers who receive a motor vehicle allowance about the importance of recording the closing kilometre readings on their odometers at the end of the day on Wednesday 28 February 2007.This reading is vital in order for taxpayers to claim a tax deduction for business travel. Without it, any deduction claim will be disallowed.
If you and those of whom you may submit on behalf of, receive a travel allowance, SARS would like to request that you record your specified vehicle’s odometer reading and keep it in a safe place ready for use later in the year in the completion of your tax return.
Please note that you are now able to submit your IT12 S & SS via our electronic service SARS eFiling. For more information go to www.sarsefiling.co.za.
Kind regards
The South African Revenue Services
So simple, and yet so effective. They have a database of all registered users and their e-mail addresses; feed it in to a mass mailing program; hit send.
Here are some other suggestions for government/big business to harness technology for our good:
- Eskom should let people register with a cellphone number and your home’s area. If there is about to be a power cut they send an SMS to everyone in that area with the estimated downtime.
- When your TV license is about to expire, you should receive an e-mail with a link to a website where it can be renewed with a credit card (the post office does something similar for PO Box renewals).
- TV stations (SABC and eTV – I can’t speak for Multichoice) should integrate their schedules with RSS feeds, e-mail reminders, SMS’s and Google Calendars.
I’m sure there are plenty of other suggestions of how relatively simple web technology could give big business’ customer relationships a shot in the arm (leave a comment if you come up with any). These are all potential ideas for small business to step in and help out. www.energy.co.za is an online pre-paid electricity purchasing site, and it looks quite independent from Eskom or the municipalities. Perhaps there could be other services like this?
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
