Tax season officially opens on Friday evening

The tax season officially opens on Friday at 8pm. This follows the auto-assessment tax filing for selected individuals which season started earlier this week.

Taxpayers are encouraged to wait until Monday to lodge despite their auto-assessments.

The South African Revenue Services (Sars) has been sending out SMSs and emails notifying qualifying taxpayers of their auto-assessments.

The revenue services says should you receive the SMS, the next step would be for you to review the auto-assessment on the SARS MobiApp or eFiling.

Sars says it has already made payments to at least four million taxpayers.

Taxpayers are advised to take control of their own tax affairs to ensure they are aware of their obligations and remain compliant.

“As for auto-assessed taxpayers, we have already paid well over R8 billion in the first seven days. We started issuing those from the 1st of July up until today. So, more or less four million South Africans have been auto assessed and that has gone on very well, well up to so far.”

Sars has also warned of scammers during this period.

“However, we wish to warn taxpayers against scams that are making rounds. Sars will never ask you to provide your banking details or your credit card details, or alternatively for you to use a link to get into Sars with. As soon as you see any of those, please run to the sky, run to the mountains. Those are scams. Those aren’t authentic source document. If you have a problem, please you can call sales, a contact centre or book an appointment to visit a sales branch.”

The Revenue Service says harsh penalties will be imposed on taxpayers, who intentionally attempt to claim impermissible expenses or understate their income.

In addition, there will be administrative non-compliance penalties for those taxpayers, who do not adhere to the deadlines of this year’s filing season.