An irp5 is also a compulsory Income Tax Certificate issued by an employer when an employee resigns or terminates the employment relationship of his or her employer. The irp5 is also used by employees to obtain refunds (thou not always the case) at the end of the tax year when performing their individual tax reconciliation during the SARS tax season. Please note that if you are an employee, you can only get your IRP5 income tax certificate from your employer, and not at SARS as most people think. The certificate can be issued either via the employer’s sars efiling profile or the employer’s SARS Easy File application depending on the number of employees.
An IRP5 cannot be issued without completing the employers EMP501 reconciliation. Its illegal for an employer to issue an IRP5’s certificate to an employee prior to having submitted it to SARS. Employers who have less than 10 employees, can opt to use their eFiling profile, whereas those with a number greater than 10, would have to use the EasyFile application integration. The EasyFile is integrated into the existing employers eFiling profile via a username and password authentication process. Does this all sound too complicated, no need to worry, we have all been there before.