SARS auto-assesses over 3 million individual non-provisional taxpayers

The South African Revenue Services (SARS) says more than 3 million taxpayers have been auto-assessed for their personal tax returns. Tax season starts on Friday, during which non-provisional taxpayers will have to submit their personal income tax returns.

SARS commissioner Edward Kieswetter says the auto assessments are part of building a smart revenue service.

"Technology, the use of data, artificial intelligence and algorithms have enabled SARS to make it easy and seamless for most individual taxpayers to comply with their legal obligations. All these innovations support our strategic objective of providing clarity and certainty to help foster a culture of voluntary compliance.

“At the same time, the use of technology and data have also enabled SARS to significantly sharpen its capability to detect non-compliance and to make such non-compliance hard and costly.”

‘’SARS will impose understatement penalties[1] to taxpayers that deliberately attempt to claim impermissible expenses or understate their income as well as administrative non-compliance penalties[2] to those taxpayers that do not adhere to the applicable deadlines of this Filing Season. Taxpayers should be aware that SARS has access to various sources of data, which enables us to track economic activity and verify the completeness and accuracy of tax declarations.’’

From Friday, affected taxpayers will receive communication through SMS or email.

‘’Provisional taxpayers as well as Trust submissions can start with filing a return from 1 July 2022 until 23 January 2023,’’ said Kieswetter.

Taxpayers who did not get an auto-assessment have until 24 October to file their returns.

Kieswetter urged taxpayer to wait for the email and SMS and not to visit SARS branches during the first week of July.

‘’Those who still prefer to visit SARS branches are reminded to please make a booking on our appointment system to ensure an efficient service experience. This can be done either by sending and SMS to 47277 with the word Booking (Space) ID number/Passport number/ Asylum Seeker number, or going to the SARS website (www.sars.gov.za) and clicking on the “Book an Appointment” icon. Tax Practitioners are urged to strictly use their channel when booking an appointment,’’ he added.

 

PICTURE: SARS

Done By: Mitchum George