A South African taxpayer utilising TaxClaw.AI to maximise their tax refund this season.
The 2026 tax season has officially opened, bringing with it a familiar wave of financial anxiety for millions of South Africans. For many, the questions begin with a simple SMS or email from SARS.
Between July 1 and July 12, SARS issued its automated assessments. While the system is designed to simplify the filing season, it often inadvertently creates confusion: some taxpayers receive an SMS stating they have been auto-assessed and discover a few thousand Rands deposited into their bank accounts, yet they are left wondering if they are legally owed more. Others are hit with auto-assessments claiming they owe SARS money, leaving them baffled. Meanwhile, a third group receives notifications stating their tax affairs are too complex for auto-assessment, forcing them to navigate the realm of manual eFiling.
Enter TaxClaw.AI, a locally developed platform aiming to provide clarity. The platform allows taxpayers to independently validate their SARS auto-assessments before making them legally binding.
The platform, launched 3 weeks ago, is spearheaded by technology experts Ben Chaud and Meraj Chhaya, alongside Marius Higgs, a registered tax practitioner with 15 years of industry experience. Interestingly, TaxClaw wasn’t originally meant for the public: “This started as a highly specialized tool used internally by our tax specialists to stress-test internal filing data,” Ben Chaud explains. “But when we saw the sheer volume of ordinary South Africans wondering about auto-assessments, we decided to democratize the technology and make AI analysis completely free for everyone.”
