There will be no extension to the November 20 tax season deadline, the SA Revenue Service (Sars) said on Wednesday.
"Sars has received a number of requests from tax practitioners and their representative associations for an extension to this year's tax season deadline," it said in a statement.
Among the reasons cited was "the unavailability of the eFiling system over the past weekend for the implementation of critical enhancements to ensure the smooth and uninterrupted availability of eFiling over the final two weeks of tax season", Sars added.
It said it had held a meeting on the matter and other concerns on Tuesday with the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), the SA Institute of Professional Accountants (SAIPA) and the SA Institute of Tax Practitioners (SAIT).
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'So far more than 2.8-million tax returns have been received by Sars' "At this meeting it was explained that the improvements to the eFiling system were intended to enhance accessibility to the system, allowing significantly more concurrent users to access
eFiling at any given time in preparation for the final weeks of Tax Season."
Sars added that eFiling users had been notified well ahead of time of the unavailability of the system.
"It was further discussed that all on-going maintenance and necessary improvements to eFiling were timed to have the least impact on practitioners and taxpayers using the system - being confined daily to the hours between midnight and 4am and, when necessary, over weekends when log-ins and submissions are at their
lowest."
Sars said submission statistics for tax season 2009 to date showed that only between 3000 and 6000 returns were submitted over weekends compared to between 70 000 and 100 000 during the work day week.
"So far more than 2.8-million tax returns have been received by Sars since the start of the filing period in July, marking an increase of 30 percent compared to the same time last year."
Sars added that general submission trends and the fact that requests for extensions had become the norm in the final weeks of tax season each year had also been discussed.
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