The roughly 30 000 South African taxpayers who have experienced refund reversals from their accounts by the South African Revenue Service (Sars) were told by the authority not to be worried.
It said in a statement on Thursday it noted the challenges with respect to refund reversal on some of the accounts of taxpayers.
“The information at Sars’s disposal indicates that 30 000 taxpayers have witnessed reversal of their refunds.”
It explained that due to the risk associated with validity of refunds payments, all refunds went through the validation process with all stakeholders in the tax ecosystem. These validations could result in refunds being flagged for verification.
“Sars has worked through these reversed refunds, and we are happy to report back that 90% of all refunds have been released. By Monday morning, any remaining refunds will either be released, or taxpayers will be engaged to provide supporting documents where necessary. These are the normal processes in the validations of refunds. Notwithstanding the above challenges, Sars has in line with its earlier commitment paid out 83% of all refunds within 72 hours,” it said.
Sars said it sincerely apologises to all taxpayers for the inconvenience caused in this validation process.
It noted that since the beginning of the Filing Season, Sars had paid out more than R14 billion to 1.5 million taxpayers.
BUSINESS REPORT