The South African Revenue Service (SARS) says it has taken note of the difficulties faced by taxpayers in the previous filing season and plans to enhance the experience this season.

SARS has officially launched the filing season with the auto-assessments expected to start on July 1.

The rest of the taxpayers will be able to start filing for their returns from July 13.

Briefing the media in Pretoria, Gauteng province this afternoon, SARS Commissioner Johnstone Makhubu highlighted areas they plan to work on to enhance taxpayers’ experience this season.

“You’ll remember last year, some provisional taxpayers had to opt in. This year, there are about 200 000 that have simple matters. They’ve got income, monthly income, but they also have got interest income that we are aware of. We’ve decided that this class of taxpayers is important for us to auto-assess because our view is that, increasingly, you’ll recall when we started with auto-assessment, we said that we’ll start with simple taxpayers and, increasingly using data and expanding data, we’ll move towards those that are complex. We think in the that journey by adding these 200-thousand taxpayers that are provisional taxpayers that will be auto-assessed during this particular year.”

–SABC–