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The South African Revenue Service (Sars) is rolling out an automated assessment service for taxpayers whose information is fully provided by their employers as the agency seeks to mechanise more of its workload.The auto-assessment period, which will automatically allow an estimated 6-million taxpayers to skip traditional filing requirements this year, will run from July 1-12 in the build-up to the traditional filing season, which starts on July 13.This comes as Sars, which breached the R2-trillion revenue collection mark for the first time in the 2025/26 financial year, focuses on overhauling outdated systems by seeking to automate error-prone manual processing of critical information. The plan includes incorporating AI into its systems and launching an ambitious new customer administration platform.In a recent tender document, Sars acknowledged that its existing reliance on manual processing creates delays and inconsistencies and limits its ability to personalise services.Part of its effort to rework its systems is the auto-assessment system, which isolates taxpayers with less complex records whose income is fully derived from formal employment and whose data is already fully reported to Sars by third parties, allowing them to avoid having to skip filing.In effect, Sars will now directly pull data from employers, medical schemes, retirement funds and financial institutions to reconcile and calculate taxpayer returns.Those who qualify will receive a notification via SMS or email informing them that they have been auto-assessed. If any refund is due and all details are in order, it will be issued within 72 hours, without the taxpayer having to do anything.In a statement on Friday, Sars urged taxpayers not to visit its service centres for filing during the auto assessment period, saying that this could lead to delays.Separately, Sars has launched a “modernisation 3.0 programme” which requires it to build an intelligent tax and customs administration platform as part of a broader ecosystem that uses advanced data science and AI.Sars has given potential bidders for the tender until October 11 to build the platform. It must be capable of handling at least 3-million survey responses a year and deliver a minimum of 99.9% uptime.
