Tax season closed on 25 November. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has released its prelim results for the past tax season. Here is a breakdown of the results released so far.
For the 2015/2016 tax year, SARS received 5.74 million returns for non-provisional taxpayers. This included:
- 4.16 million submissions by individuals for the 2015/2016 tax year.
- 47 000 submissions by trusts for 2015/2016 tax year.
- 1.52 million returns for previous tax years from individuals and trusts.
Other notable figures from the 2015/2016 tax season are:
- The SARS Contact Centre handled more than 3.6 million calls.
- The SARS branch offices assisted more than 5.1 million taxpayers.
- SARS processed 99.9%of all returns electronically.
- 92.4% of tax returns were assessed within three seconds.
- 93.28% of refunds were paid to taxpayers within 72 hours.
- 173 000 taxpayers made use of the Help You e-File channel which is 15% higher than in 2015.
- 44 373 People made use SARS’s mobile application to submit their 2016 tax returns.
- SARS paid out R15.5 billion in tax refunds to 1.98 million taxpayers.
Furthermore, SARS imposed R1.64 billion worth of penalties on defaulting taxpayers. The Revenue Service has urged that anyone still needing to submit a tax return for 2015/2016 do so immediately.
Tom Moyane, SARS commissioner, said: “SARS wishes to express its appreciation to all those taxpayers that submitted their tax returns before the deadline. Paying tax is the highest form of patriotism.”
