Pretoria – The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has recorded over two million income tax returns by 9am this morning.
This compares favourably with the 1 840 834 returns submitted in the same period last year.
Of these, 1 060 242 were filed via eFiling, 936 041 were filed electronically at branches, and only 3 843 in manual paper form.
According to SARS, the highest rate of submissions was on 2 July, with well over 80 000 tax returns received.
Activity on SARS eFiling site reached new levels at the start of the Tax Season, 2 July, which saw more than 320 000 log-ins onto the site, with more than 300 000 recorded on 1 July.
The highest number of log-ins per day during 2012 was 266 000.
In the 45 days since Tax Season started, SARS has paid over 1 million refunds (1 011 534), worth over R6 billion (R6 081 480 057) to taxpayers. This is considerably more than last year, where 964 048 refunds worth over R5 billion (R5 305 803 751) were paid in the same period.
SARS has thanked all taxpayers who have already submitted their income tax returns for this year and has encouraged all taxpayers to continue to submit returns early in order to avoid the last minute rush during the final days of the Tax Season.
The deadline for taxpayers, who submit their tax returns manually by post or by dropping them off in a SARS drop box, is 27 September 2013.
The deadline for all non-provisional taxpayers is 22 November 2013. Non-provisional taxpayers are the majority of employed individuals, who submit a tax return and who earn an income from one or more employer.
The deadline for provisional taxpayers is 31 January 2014. Provisional taxpayers form a much smaller segment of the tax base and are those individuals with other forms of income like investment income, income from business activities, rental income, royalties income or directors of companies. – SAnews.gov.za
