SARS coming after bank accounts in South Africa

The South African Revenue Service’s (SARS) efforts to combat non-compliance are working, and the taxman will keep using tools that have proven effective in identifying tax evaders.

This includes monitoring South Africans’ bank accounts, which SARS has used to identify taxpayers whose lifestyles don’t match their tax contributions.

This was one of the messages from Tax Consulting SA following SARS commissioner Edward Kieswetter’s presentation of South Africa’s tax haul for 2024.

Kieswetter confirmed that SARS hit record highs in gross revenue collection, a staggering R2.303 trillion, at the end of March 2025.

SARS said it also increased refunds for the year, paying out R448 billion to taxpayers—the highest-ever amount and up 8.2% from the R414 billion paid out last year.

This brings the collected net amount to R1.855 trillion, which is almost R8.8 billion higher than the revised estimate in the 2025 Budget and R114.0 billion more than last year’s R1.741 trillion.

This represents an impressive 6.9% year-on-year growth, and Kieswetter attributed this to enhanced strategies and the diligent implementation of compliance measures.

More simply, an increase in revenue collection directly results from an increase in broader taxpayer compliance, partly due to compliance surveillance initiatives.

Tax Consulting SA noted that SARS has made it clear that it has taken and will take full advantage of technological advancements to come after taxpayers.

These advancements include AI, data science, and machine learning algorithms to counter criminality and non-compliance.

These data-driven insights inform SARS of all transactional records about specific taxpayers.

Kieswetter explained that using AI significantly reduces the “man-hours” and concomitant room for error.

An entire team is no longer needed to extrapolate these records into strong legal cases for non-compliance; rather, tech-savvy individuals coexist with AI.

“This collaborative approach enables SARS to gain access to a comprehensive dataset, facilitating more robust evaluations of taxpayers’ financial activities,” said Tax Consulting SA.

Keeping an eye on your bank account

Echoing its strategic objective of making non-compliance hard and costly, Kieswetter noted that interventions from SARS’ Compliance Programme generated R301.5 billion in compliance revenue.

Although accounting for only 13% of gross revenue collections, the 2024/25 Compliance Programme revenue demonstrates a 15.8% year-on-year increase in collections.

When the compliance revenue was further broken down, the main contributors were resolving outstanding tax debts, audits, and verifications across various taxpayer segments.

Tax Consulting SA highlighted that the data-driven insights derived from AI use were a major contributor to SARS’ compliance crusade.

“These include processing taxpayer bank statements without prior warning or consent and even gaining access to taxpayer information from Crypto-Asset Service Providers upon request,” the firm said.

Many taxpayers may be surprised to learn that the tax authorities can access their bank accounts directly, but experts indicate that this is now standard practice for the Revenue Service.

Jashwin Baijoo, Associate Director at Tax Consulting SA, previously explained that SARS can direct a bank to withdraw funds from an account to settle a tax debt without the account holder’s consent.

Baijoo further noted that court rulings favouring the Revenue Service have consistently upheld its position.

A recent case involving a company in business rescue demonstrated that opting for this route does not eliminate debts owed to SARS.

In this instance, the company owed approximately R24 million in VAT to SARS. However, it failed to formally agree with the tax authority to exempt this debt during the business rescue proceedings.

Ultimately, the case went to court, and the company remained responsible for the full amount owed, resulting in direct payments to SARS from the company’s banks, Nedbank and Investec.

Individuals are not exempt from this. A BusinessTech reader recently explained how their bank account was drained by SARS to cover their tax liability after letters of demand and calls from the revenue service were ignored.

Baijoo stressed that taxpayers cannot ignore SARS or expect the problem to resolve itself.

“With SARS having access to information, including all financial records, and the right processing automation, the best approach for all taxpayers is to heed SARS’ warning that non-compliance will be both hard and costly,” said the consultancy firm.