The overwhelming majority of taxpayers met the submission deadline for the 2014 tax-filing season, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) says.
It says that 94.49 percent of taxpayers (4.05 million) who were required to submit a return did so on time. This is 10.14 percent higher than the 3.69 million in the 2013 tax season.
The total number of returns submitted for 2014 (5.32 million, including outstanding returns from previous years) is marginally lower than the total for 2013 (6.09 million), a SARS statement says.
The decrease is due to the introduction of a higher submission threshold. Effectively, the new threshold means that taxpayers with one source of income below R250 000 for the year, from one employer, with no refund claims on their tax returns, did not have to submit a tax return, SARS says.
Payments from assessed taxpayers amounted to R4.4 billion this year, which is five percent lower than the R4.7 billion paid in 2013. SARS paid tax refunds of R15.2 billion to 2.1 million taxpayers.
Of the 1.02 million outstanding returns received from previous years, defaulting taxpayers paid SARS a total of R436 million in outstanding penalties. SARS will continue to impose penalties against defaulting taxpayers.