The South African Revenue Services (SARS) said it has already paid out about R10 billion in refunds to at least 1.6 million taxpayers who were auto-assessed ahead of this year’s Tax Season.
According to the revenue, in the first two weeks of July, at least five million taxpayers were auto assessed.
“We completed these annual returns and tax assessments while, simultaneously, running each assessment outcome through our compliance risk and tax fraud detection capability.
“All this is possible because of the investment that we have been able to make in increasing and expanding the use of third-party data in the past few years.
“Last year, this work alone added R100 billion to the fiscus through the prevention of impermissible refunds,” said SARS Commissioner, Edward Kieswetter during a media briefing in Cape Town.
His comments come as the filing season for provisional and non-provisional taxpayers kicked-off on Monday.
He said SARS was able to process over 90% of refunds for taxpayers that are not selected for verification within 72 hours through their fraud risk detection AI, adding that direct high-risk taxpayers whom they suspect there may be a fraudulent or impermissible refund, were referred for further verification.
Kieswetter said since Monday, 191 000 people have filed their tax returns.
“At least 183 000 of those returns were filed on SARS’ online e-filing and mobile application service, and about 7700 were filed through Taxpayer Service Centres.
“We anticipate, in total, by round about the 20th of January to have issued approximately eight million assessments for the 2024 tax year alone, and that’s besides prior year tax returns that taxpayers will submit,” explained the Commissioner.
Kieswetter also warned taxpayers against scams that are increasing.
“SARS will never ask taxpayers to give their banking or credit cards details, nor does it operate any links that ask taxpayers to log in their details into a hyperlink,” cautioned the Commissioner.
