Siyavuya Mzantsi and Sapa
TAXPAYERS at Sars offices in central Cape Town queued around the block ahead of today’s deadline.
Clerk James Stigling said he was unsuccessful in filing online.
“I have been here for about three hours. I was hoping to do eFiling, but I was not able to complete it. I thought I had time until today. The line is moving, but very slowly. I am hoping to complete this today because I took a day off work just to do this,” he said.
Nolitha Nyoka, from Khayelitsha, said: “You realise on the last day that this is quite serious. When I arrived there were a lot of people in the queue. The line was moving very slowly. I have hope that I will complete the process today.”
Sars spokeswoman Marika Muller said about 3.8 million South Africans had already submitted tax returns before the deadline.
There was an increase in the number of people using eFiling, the contact centre and visiting branches this week. “Of those, just over 2 million returns were completed via eFiling and over 1.8 million completed electronically at a Sars branch,” said Muller.
“Just 3 929 physical paper returns have been submitted thus far. Tax season 2014 will end this Friday (November 21) for most South African taxpayers, and Sars urges all those who have not yet submitted a return to do so as soon as possible.”
Muller also warned: “Taxpayers are warned to be on the lookout for fraud and phishing scams, where criminals try to gain access to their banking details by sending e-mails pretending to be from Sars.”