The South African Revenue Service (SARS) expects to auto-assess about six million taxpayers during Filing Season 2026.
Image: Gemini
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) expects to auto-assess about six million taxpayers during filing season 2026.
Speaking during the launch of filing season on Thursday, SARS Commissioner Dr Johnstone Makhubu said the revenue service has expanded its auto-assessment programme and will include an additional 200,000 provisional taxpayers with relatively simple tax affairs.
Auto-assessment allows the revenue service to use information received from employers, banks, medical schemes, retirement funds and other third-party data providers to calculate a taxpayer's tax position automatically.
"David is one of those that would belong to the six million odd that we have estimated will be auto-assessed this year. David doesn't have to do anything. From July 1 to July 12, he would belong into a batched population," Makhubu said while explaining one of four taxpayer personas developed by SARS to illustrate the filing process.
The auto-assessment period will run from July 1 to July 12, 2026. taxpayers selected for auto-assessment will receive notifications from SARS in batches and can review their assessments through eFiling or the SARS MobiApp.
According to the revenue service, taxpayers should not become concerned if they do not receive an auto-assessment notification immediately, as the six million assessments will be issued over several days.
Makhubu said SARS recorded a 98% acceptance rate among auto-assessed taxpayers during the previous filing season.
"If what we've seen last year was that 98% of the people did not change anything, they simply accepted the auto-assessment, we are confident that you will have a seamless experience if you belong to this group," Makhubu said.
"We also know that even the 3 or 2 or 3% that changed, the majority of them didn't change anything. They just opened and saved their return and necessarily didn't change much. And therefore, for us, it's important that this population is given the time between the 1st and the 12th to be able to get that seamless experience".
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