Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan declared tax filing season open on Monday (2 July) by announcing that taxpayers are now able to file their returns on a mobile phone.
The minister said that people could complete their e-filing with South African Revenue Service (SARS) via an application on a smartphone or iPad.
In its “2012 Tax Season Guide” on its website, SARSs announced several digital innovations including online access to trained agents.
“Help-You-eFile is a new service innovation from SARS which gives you access to our friendly Contact Centre agents while you’re online,” SARS said. “And they will be able to see exactly what you are doing and help you every step of the way. It’s like having your personal tax assistant…who works for SARS,” it said.
The tax revenue service also highlighted its new e-filing mobisite. “Submitting your individual Income Tax Return (ITR12) on your cellphone via our mobisite will soon be an option for people on the go. When you go to www.sarsefiling.co.za we will detect your mobile phone and you will be routed to sarsefiling.mobi,” it said. This was confirmed by Gordhan on Monday.
According to SARS, with a new e-filing App, taxpayers would also be able to file their individual Income Tax Returns quickly and easily on their smartphones, tablets or iPads.
SARS also pointed to its e-filing videos on YouTube to help people learn how to register for e-filing, submit an IRT12 and how to submit supporting documents, if required.
On Monday, SARS commissioner Oupa Magashula told the media “We have an eFiling app (application) for tablets, iPads and smartphones. We have developed a mobi site for cellphone users.”
He said about 12 million individual taxpayers contributed a total of R251.6 billion through personal tax income tax in the last year, or 33.8% of the country’s total revenue collection.
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