The helpdesk has been inundated with questions asking why TaxTim is unable to import IRP5 details from eFiling and why taxpayers have to manually enter all the data that had usually been  imported in previous tax years.

Here's a few reasons, why you may be experiencing this issue:

• The tax season usually opens 1 July each year -  if you are trying to complete your tax return early (i.e  from 1 March) your data will not be available on eFiling as all institutions (banks, medical aids, retirement funds, employers etc.) have till the end of May to send their data to SARS. We suggest you wait until June and then log into your eFiling profile, click on the button to "Refresh Data” and this should bring your tax certificates into your tax return.
• You are filing an old tax return (e.g 2008) which means that SARS had not yet loaded your IRP5 data on eFiling. Please note, imports to eFiling (from SARS internal system) only occurred from 2012 onwards. In this case, you will need to enter your tax data manually.
• The company's data you are waiting on (IRP5, medical aid, RAF, investments) might still be in review stage with SARS or they have not submitted any data to SARS just yet. Again, we suggest you wait until June and then follow steps to refresh your tax certificates on eFiling.
• Your tax return was auto-assessed by SARS and your data differs from what SARS has on record for you, such as the IRP5 your employer sent you is outdated and SARS has different income amounts for you etc. You will need to get the updated IRP5 from your employer and manually capture it on your TaxTim return, then submit the return, if SARS rejects the new submission, you will need to lodge a dispute with SARS. You can look at these steps: How to file a dispute with SARS
• Your tax return was audited and closed by SARS and each time you try to restart the tax return on TaxTim's site you are told that there's no data to display. To amend your tax return, you'll need to lodge a dispute with SARS, please see How to file a dispute with SARS
• Tax season has officially started (July) and SARS still has no data available for you - if you started your tax return on eFiling before the data was imported from the SARS system to eFiling (i.e between 1 March and 30 June), you need to log into your eFiling profile, click on the button to "Refresh Data" which will refresh your IRP5, investment, medical and RA data, which should fix things for you.

We hope this clarifies the issue for you. If you have not yet received any of your tax documents (e.g IRP5, medical aid certificate, investment certificate, etc) for the upcoming tax season,  don't worry - they have until the middle of June to send your documents to SARS. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask our Helpdesk.