Due to the “tremendous response” by taxpayers to meet Friday’s 2005 tax return deadline, offices of the South African Revenue Service (Sars) will open countrywide on Saturday from 8am to 12.30pm in order to accept returns, Sars said in a statement on Thursday.
According to Sars, approximately two million taxpayers had already submitted their tax returns by Thursday, with long queues forming in Sars offices and more than 30 000 calls from taxpayers in just one day.
“These measures should help with the spillover of taxpayers who may be unable to submit their returns on time in light of the high volumes of people who are already queuing at our branch offices,” Sars said.
“Sars must acknowledge the fantastic response by millions of South African taxpayers who have submitted their tax returns for this year’s filing-season campaign.”
To date, Sars has received about 60% of the 2,8-million income-tax returns that were issued to individual taxpayers during the first quarter of this year.
Sars emphasised that the deadline to submit tax returns remains Friday July 8. All returns that are received on Saturday July 9 will be deemed to have been received on July 8, as the intervention to extend office hours is purely operational. — I-Net Bridge