Edward Kieswetter, Sars Commissioner. Picture: GCIS
The South African Revenue Services (Sars) has paid out around R10 billion in refunds to about 1.6 million taxpayers who were auto-assessed as the 2024 tax season begins.
Sars Commissioner, Edward Kieswetter told the media on Tuesday that about five million taxpayers were auto-assessed in the first two weeks of July.
He said that the revenue service has completed these annual returns and tax assessments while, simultaneously, running each assessment outcome through their compliance risk and tax fraud detection capability.
“All this is possible because of the investment that we have been able to make in increasing and expanding the use of third-party data in the past few years,” he explained.
“We’re able to process over 90% of refunds for taxpayers that are not selected for verification within 72 hours through our fraud risk detection AI. We direct high risk taxpayers, for whom we suspect there may be a fraudulent or impermissible refund for further verification,” Kieswetter added.
The commissioner added that in order to complete auto-assessments accurately, the revenue service had to collect around 150 million third-party data records.
He explained that this sensitive information was sent through the application of AI and enhanced machine learning algorithms.
“We are extremely reliant on employers, banks and other third-party information providers to provide us with accurate data. The integrity of the entire value chain of data is important. We have worked extremely hard this past year with large institutions and entities to improve the accuracy of bulk data submissions,” Kieswetter said.
Furthermore, the commissioner said that Sars used sophisticated graph database technology to decipher billions and billions of rows of data that allowed the revenue team to compose a single entity view of a taxpayer.
“This allows us to produce an assessment outcome as well as conducting the necessary risk detection through the artificial intelligence methodologies,” he noted.
Sars said that it collected a record amount of R2.16-trillion by the end of March 2024.
South Africans who have accepted the auto-assessment process will have to wait about 72 hours before they can expect their tax refund to be paid, according to Sars.
The service said the refund would take about 72 hours from the date on which Sars issued the auto-assessment to taxpayers on eFiling or Sars MobiApp.
“If your banking details are correct, there are no outstanding returns, and no verification required by Sars, your refund will be paid within 72 hours of issuing the Notice of Assessment,” the revenue service said.
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