Mean Sars backs down on disabled

The news that the SA Revenue Service (Sars) has backed down on tighter new rules for claiming expenses for the education of children with disabilities has been welcome by tax experts as common sense prevailing.

We would hope it is more than that – perhaps that compassion for the tremendous burden on parents who have disabled children has triumphed over bean-counting.

The tightening of the allowable claims for schooling special needs children began last year and got even worse this year, provoking such an outcry that 11 600 individuals signing a petition.

A bizarre argument put forward by Sars was that school fees are not the consequence of a disability, but a consequence of education.

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Thankfully, the revenue office has reverted to its regime from 2012, which allows a lot more education-related expenses for disabled children to be offset against income.

It is to be hoped that, in future, no spreadsheet-obsessed official does try to reverse this decision. The money which would be saved for the national Treasury is miniscule compared to the financial suffering this would wreak on families.

How we care for the most vulnerable in society defines us as a people and as a nation. Nobody wants to be called mean.