eFiling gains momentum

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) expects to receive two million tax returns submitted via eFiling, double the amount received last year.

SARS has extended its deadline for tax returns submitted via the eFiling system until 23 January. While it expects a surge in numbers closer to the date, SARS is optimistic that eFiling this year will be more of a success than last.

Spokesman Adrian Lackay says: “We've noticed a marked increase in the use of the eFiling system when compared with last year. Whereas last year we had approximately one million taxpayers using eFiling, we expect that figure to double this year.”

The SARS eFiling system was launched in 2004 to replace manual tax return submissions. According to SARS, last year over 7.5 million returns were submitted in total, with one million individual tax returns filed through eFiling.

This year, individual taxpayers have until 23 January to submit their returns via eFiling and, on 31 March, they will have to pay any additional income tax interest-free. The manual submission deadline was 21 November last year. Businesses using the eFiling system have until 25 January to submit their returns via eFiling. Currently, 350 000 businesses are using the system.

“The real success of eFiling is that it has been extended from supplying this service only to businesses to tax-paying individuals. Until two years ago, the electronic service was limited to businesses for services such as payroll,” says Lackay.

Last year, SARS experienced a number of technical issues, when the system crashed due to a significant number of taxpayers submitting late returns.

Lackay claims: “We found last year we experienced technical problems because the majority of people waited until the last week before deadline to submit their eFiling tax returns. SARS had a tenfold increase in the load of electronic tax returns coming in, which caused problems with the system.”

He maintains this would have happened to any system in the world.

Lackay adds that SARS is appealing to taxpayers to submit their returns as early as possible to avoid this from happening again. “The benefit for taxpayers who use this electronic system is that SARS can process the returns a lot faster as it's an automated process.”