I  obtained a fixed percentage tax directive from SARS in 2019 as I am a commission earner. Payroll has advised me that when a fixed tax directive is implemented in the Sage Payroll system, the year to date tax is recalculated. In my case my taxable earnings were approx 41% to 45%, the tax directive is 34%. They did a dummy payslip on normal earnings (no commission) based on the 34% directive and came out with Tax value of over R57k, about twice the usual tax I was paying as per tax tables on the 41%. To me this does not make sense at all, if the directive is lower than the tax tables, then why is the system calculating my tax owed to SARS to be such a ridiculous amount on my normal earnings. In addition SARS rule is that the directive should only be applied when there is a commission, otherwise the employer must ignore it. My tax practioner advised me that all payroll systems have such a rule built into the software, however our payroll vendor claims its not possible to do this. This issue has been going on since November 2019. Please provide some clarity, is it the Sage payroll system or the vendor who does not know what they are doing?