SARS has given you just 40 working days to submit your tax return. If you received your auto-assessment at the beginning of July, your time to submit has already expired. Auto-assessments issued on 4 July 2022, expired on 30 August 2022. Count your work days carefully. SARS is applying this rule very strictly. If you do nothing, your auto-assessment will very soon become FINAL.

For more on auto-assessments and their deadlines, please read here.

Missed the 40 day deadline already?

If you missed the deadline (or are very close to it) you need to Request an Extension on eFiling ASAP.  SARS will allow you a further 21 working days to request an extension.

Important:  First apply for an extension,  wait for the approval from SARS and then submit your tax return.

 If you submit a tax return before an extension is granted, it is likely that SARS will automatically reject your tax return and you will need to file a dispute.

*SARS issued letters on 13 March 2023 asking all taxpayers who filed a 2022 tax return more than 40 days after they were auto assessed, to request an extension as the returns were all rejected on eFiling. 

Previously, SARS set all these tax returns in a status on eFiling, called "Routed for Manual assessment", this is a step where SARS would take up to 90 business days to review and if they need to see any supporting documents, they would contact the taxpayer after the 90 working days to forward the documents. 

This time around, SARS seem to have removed this option and all tax returns were rejected, without SARS even looking at the new submissions. 

If this happened to you, please follow these steps:

Log onto eFiling and open the initial ITA34 SARS issued when they auto assessed your return, compare the assessment to what you resubmitted, if it's identical, there's no need for you to do anything. Please store your documents for 5 years as SARS have already closed the tax year for you. 

If your ITA34 is missing some income or deductions, you will need to lodge a dispute with SARS, you can use these steps to do it Steps to file a dispute with SARS