The South African Revenue Service (SARS) will from today intensify its services and operations to taxpayers by visiting large employers to assist employees with completing their income tax returns.
These extended services are part of a broad outreach and service campaign that will increase SARS' interaction with taxpayers over the next 6 weeks until the 31 October 2007 Filing Season deadline for the submission of Income Tax Returns.
SARS is encouraged by the submission rate of returns to date since about 5 million newly designed and simplified tax forms were issued to taxpayers from July this year. The increased use of the electronic submission facility - eFiling (www.sarsefiling.co.za) - is also encouraging.
The following statistics were recorded by this morning, 17 September 2007:
A Year-to-date comparison indicates a much higher rate of submission of tax returns which is a very positive trend both in terms of public awareness and a growing climate of compliance in general.
SARS will from today intensify its focus on the following:
SARS branch offices around the country will from today dispatch teams of SARS officials to visit workplaces of large corporations, mines and factories to assist employees. These services will also be extended to public facilities such as libraries and shopping centres over the next 6 weeks where taxpayers can complete and hand in their returns.
SARS will over this period, continue to act against taxpayers who have outstanding returns from previous years. Starting this week SARS will focus its enforcement capability on this issue with the cooperation of other law enforcement agencies.
Taxpayers can call the SARS call centre on 0860 12 12 18.
ENDS
ISSUED BY THE COMMISSIONER FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN REVENUE SERVICE
PRETORIA