You have filed all your outstanding tax returns with SARS and when receiving your ITA34 assessment/ Statement of Account/ Penalty statement you notice that you owe SARS some tax. There are three main options available to you, if you want to make a payment to SARS.

1. At a bank

A payment can be made at a branch of any of the following banks:

i) ABSA
ii) Capitec
iii) FNB
iv) Nedbank
v) Standard Bank2

2. Payments via eFiling

A payment can be initiated on your SARS eFiling profile. The payment is presented by SARS to the bank, which the payer has listed with SARS under the Banking details information. You will need to log into your bank account to authorise the eFiling payment.   On authorisation, the bank will send an immediate confirmation to SARS that payment has been made. For further clarification please read here

3. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)

You can make payment via your bank by simply using the standard drop-down listing of pre-loaded beneficiary IDs listed by the bank under your managed/authorised beneficiaries. All SARS beneficiary IDs are prefixed with the naming convention “SARS- Tax Type”.

All internet payments must be correctly referenced to ensure that SARS is able to identify your payment and correctly allocate it to your account..

There are different SARS accounts to use depending on the type of tax you need to pay.

The accounts relevant for the payment of your personal income tax are:  

SARS- ITA: Income Tax (Assessed tax) and

Administrative Penalties

SARS-PROV: Provisional Tax

Turnover Tax

The payment will only be accepted if the correct 19-digit payment reference number (PRN) is used. The unique PRN can be obtained on the relevant SARS payment form. For a breakdown of the PRN, please refer to the table below:

The following banks support this method: ABSA, AlBaraka, Bank of Athens, Capitec, FNB, HBZ Bank, HSBC, Investec, JP Morgan, Mercantile Bank, Nedbank and Standard Bank.

Please see our step by step blog for more information.

4. Foreign Payments

Payments can be made electronically into SARS’ bank account using the standard SWIFT 103 message and the Beneficiary ID/Account Number “SARS-FOR-999”.

This payment method should only be used by foreign taxpayers where no other payment options or channels are available e.g. where payments using eFiling, internet banking (EFT) or payment at

a bank is not available. Note that if a foreign taxpayer has a South African bank account, this payment

method may not be used.