E-filing withstands last-minute rush

Johannesburg, 06 Feb 2009

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has this year again described its e-filing drive as a complete success - reporting a 50% increase in the adoption of e-filing.

It rubbishes claims its site went down in the days leading up to the deadline for individual tax return submissions.

SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay stated that on Wednesday - the day before the deadline - SARS recorded more than 300 000 log-ins, at one point peaking at 16 000 log-ins in one hour.

Lackay noted that on average more than 7 000 tax returns were filed per hour on Wednesday - which adds up to about two per second.

“In total, over 86 000 returns were filed [Wednesday] via SARS eFiling, which is a new record for a single day - the previous record was last year's e-filing deadline, on which approximately 60 000 returns were filed.”

Commenting on the overall increase in the popularity of e-filing, Lackay pointed out that, as at 4 January, SARS had received over 2.1 million registrations to submit returns via e-filing - including 16 000 new registrations on Wednesday.

“To date, 1.2 million returns have been submitted via e-filing during tax season 2008 and we expect over 100 000 to file returns today [Thursday].”

By last year's deadline for e-filing submissions, registrations for e-filing reached approximately 1.1 million and approximately 600 000 returns had been filed.

“As such, we have seen a growth of approximately 50% in the adoption of e-filing as a preferred channel of submission over the past year. This follows a phenomenal increase in e-filing in its first year, which grew from approximately 30 000 returns during a limited pilot release in 2006 to over one million in 2007,” says Lackay.

Glitches?

Despite SARS claiming there were no problems with regard to e-filing this year, several users complained about not being able to log onto the SARS eFiling Web site earlier this week. However, Lackay retorted this is “total nonsense”.

Some users also complained about the SARS call centre, saying they either struggled to get through or experienced dropped calls during the past few days.

However, Lackay also dismissed this, saying the call centre is keeping abreast of demand.

“Approximately 20 000 calls a day are being received and handled by the call centre, with current waiting times of an average of 10 minutes. We have placed additional call centre agents in the call centre for the last minute rush.

“Obviously, peak times ahead of filing deadlines do significantly increase the demand on the call centre and increase waiting times, but no organisation can staff up for these short peak periods.”

To assist with the demand, SARS introduced an automated password reset and reminder function in its call centre line, which handled over 1 000 calls a day, because people have forgotten their passwords. This is in addition to users being able to reset passwords online.

“Each year we try to encourage taxpayers not to wait until the last minute to file - taxpayers have had since September last year to file their returns and we caution them that waiting until the last week will probably result in delayed service from SARS,” says Lackay.

“We are very encouraged with the number of people who have adopted e-filing. We are also very encouraged with the response e-filing has received from users.”