Deloitte Namibian ITAS Communication | Payment references

Period changes and payment references

When the ITAS system came online in January 2019, there were some changes that were effected by Inland Revenue relating to the tax periods. Inland Revenue aligned the tax periods for PAYE, all withholding taxes and import VAT with the March to February tax year. For example an import VAT return for March 2019 is reflected as import VAT period 2020/01, being the first month in the 2020 tax year.

However, the payment system still recognizes the periods aligned to the calendar year. For example the payment for import VAT period 2020/01 would be 2019/03.This is causing some allocation issues in ITAS and requires Inland Revenue to manually allocate payments to relevant tax periods.

In order to ensure that payments are allocated correctly and avoid delays in processing, Inland Revenue’s ITAS team has advised that the calendar tax period should be used for payments until further notice. This means that, for example, the tax period for any withholding tax, PAYE or import VAT submissions for May 2019 would be 2020-03, but the payment period reference should be 201905.

As mentioned, payments that have been made already needs to be reallocated. We recommend that you request the allocation from Inland Revenue, if the payment for a particular tax period shows outstanding on ITAS.