eFiling up and running for tax season
SARS says it takes its duty to serve taxpayers very seriously.
NELSPRUIT – It’s time to submit tax returns again. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) launched its tax season on July 1.
It acknowledged that there were initial problems with eFiling which affected the public’s access to the site. However, it is constantly being monitored.
“SARS received a number of complaints and enquiries from the media suggesting that the eFiling website had crashed or gone down,” said Mr Adrian Lackay, spokesman for the company. “These claims are false and alarming. Activity on the website is constantly being monitored and SARS is working with its service provider to urgently resolve problems that cause delays or limitations.”
On Wednesday, the agency said the response by taxpayers in the first 48 hours of the season opening have been overwhelmingly positive.
“Activity by taxpayers and -practitioners on the eFiling website continues to reach new levels,” Lackay said. “On Tuesday, more than 320 000 logins onto the site were recorded, with more than 300 000 on Monday. The highest number of logins per day during 2012 was 266 000.”
He said that SARS took its duty to serve taxpayers very seriously. “We regret the inconvenience caused to some. It is anticipated that some delays and limitation to access eFiling may continue as work is underway to upgrade systems, but any notion that it has ‘crashed’ must be rejected.”
It is said that all operations and services at SARS branch offices are functioning optimally. By 09:00 on Wednesday, the following on the submission of tax returns were recorded: the number of tax returns submitted stood at 198 276, the returns submitted on SARS eFiling were 135 377, returns submitted at SARS branch offices totalled 62 855.
