More than 4.3-million individual non-provisional taxpayers filed their income tax returns by the extended deadline of December 2, which is a 46% increase over 2020, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) said on December 13.

“This increase in voluntary compliance was made possible through a virtual filing season, which aimed to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on taxpayers, our staff and other citizens. The shift towards a virtual tax filing season is also directly aligned to our vision of building a smart, modern Sars that is trusted and admired,” Sars Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said.

Of the filed returns, more than 2.6-million were submitted via eFiling, which is a 7% increase, with 523 659 returns submitted via the MobiApp, a 59% increase.

Further, more than 306 000 returns were submitted via Sars branches, with an encouraging 15% decrease. Sars agents also assisted taxpayers through virtual appointments, or later in branches after they reopened on August 16.

Sars also introduced an SMS service, which allowed taxpayers to book an appointment, request their tax number and check if they needed to submit a return.

“Despite many challenges, including Covid-19 restrictions, load shedding and our own internal limitations, our strategic intent of promoting voluntary compliance is gradually gaining momentum, as can be seen in the statistics and trends for this filing season which are very encouraging under the circumstances,” said Kieswetter.

“Such voluntary compliance reinforces our belief that most taxpayers want to do the right thing and meet their legal obligations. We are working very hard to make this important task easy and simple by providing clarity and certainty, while expanding online channels through which taxpayers can transact with our organisation.”

Sars committed at the launch of the filing season on July 1 to expand the use of the auto-assessment service to more than three-million taxpayers. This filing season Sars sent out 3.4-million auto-assessments. More than 2.2-million taxpayers have accepted the auto-assessment, with more than 1.5-million accepting without any changes. This represents a 74% acceptance rate of the new service offering.

However, more than 630 000 taxpayers neither accepted nor edited their returns. Sars will be sending estimated assessments to taxpayers that have not taken any action.

Sars completed 93% of assessments were issued in under five seconds during the filing season and paid out refunds to 86% of taxpayers within 72 hours. It paid out more than R17-billion in refunds and the average refund was R11 000.

“Sars also committed to conclude seven out of every ten verification audits within 21 days. However, we missed this target of 70%, reaching only 67% of audits completed in this time-frame. Last year, we concluded 62% of audits within 21 working days, so there has been an increase,” Kieswetter pointed out.

Sars also saw one-million e-Booking appointments made, before and after the branches opened, fielded 1.6-million taxpayers calls through its contact centre agents, and two-million Help-You-eFile calls were made to the Contact Centre. There were also more than 500 000 walk-ins to the branches by taxpayers who did not have an appointment.

"Despite the measurable progress, the organisation will have to work to continually improve our service culture and standards, expand taxpayer education offerings, and promote the online platforms and digital offerings we have created to interact with taxpayers, among other things.

“Taxpayers must note that, as previously announced, Sars will levy penalties from January 2022 where one of more returns are outstanding. Before the change in the legislation, SARS could only levy penalties where two or more returns were outstanding. Taxpayers are encouraged to submit all outstanding returns including those of previous years,” said Kieswetter.