Finance

SARS announces dates for tax season 2025 – when to expect auto assessments

Staff Writer

 ·3 Jun 2025

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has announced the filing dates for tax season 2025, which will open on 21 July.

The tax season for individual taxpayers (non-provisional) will open 21 July 2025 and run to 20 October 2025.

Auto assessments will start rolling out two weeks before, starting 7 July 2025 and running through to 20 July.

The filing season for provisional taxpayers will run from 21 July 2025 to 19 January 2026, which is also the filing window for trusts.

The revenue service said that all taxpayers who have not been processed through auto-assessments will have to file their returns manually.

However, there are some exceptions.

Taxpayers who earn less than R500,000 a year are not required to file a return if they meet the requirements. More information on these requirements can be read here.

SARS urged all taxpayers to prepare their documentation early to check their assessments and to avoid last-minute delays.

Taxpayers should also ensure that their banking details are correct and updated so that any refunds due can be processed quickly and efficiently, it said.

“If you need to change your bank details, you must first check that your security contact details, email and cell phone number on the SARS eFiling are up to date,” it said.

“There is no need to do anything if your banking details and security contact details have not changed.”

Tax season 2025 dates

Auto Assessments

SARS said that its auto-assessment processes in 2025 will be even larger than last year, with the group identifying a significant segement of non-provisional and provisional taxpayers who qualify.

These taxpayers receive income from one or more sources from formal and other forms of employment and, but their tax affairs are not complicated have been selected to be automatically assessed.

“The process of automatic assessment is made possible by the availability of third party data received from employers, pension fund administrators, medical aid schemes and more,” it said.

“This enables SARS to complete the tax declaration on behalf of this segment of taxpayers and issue them with an Auto Assessment.”

Importantly, taxpayers in the auto assessment category do not have to do anything if they are satisfied with the calculation on their tax returns.

However, if the taxpayer is of the opinion that SARS has not captured all the necessary information, they are free to make changes on their tax returns and submit the missing information through eFiling by 20 October 2025.

Where the taxpayer has a refund, they will receive it in 72 hours if all their information is correct. If they owe SARS, they must pay SARS through their respective banks, and the details are provided below.

The steps in the Auto Assessment process will work as follows:

1. From the 7 July, SARS will communicate directly with affected taxpayers by SMS and/or email, notifying taxpayers of their auto-assessed tax returns.
2. If there is a refund due to the taxpayer, it will be paid directly to the taxpayer’s bank account within 72 business hours after the notification. If there is money owing to SARS, it must be paid to SARS’ Bank Account, eFiling or through the SARS MobiApp by the stipulated date.
3. Taxpayers can access their auto assessed income tax returns through any of SARS’s channels, such as the SARS MobiApp or SARS eFiling, to review and verify the completeness and accuracy of the information that resulted in the auto assessment.
4. If a taxpayer is satisfied with the auto assessment, they don’t have to do anything further and the process terminates at this point.
5. If the taxpayer finds that there is missing and/or inaccurate information, pertaining to either income or expenses, which may have affected the outcome, it must be declared to SARS by submitting a tax return to SARS.

Taxpayers are urged to ensure their tax affairs are up to date and in order, with experts warning that the Revenue Service is expected to be especially strict this year.

SARS is on the hunt for an additional R20 billion in tax this year at minimum, meaning it will likely leave no stone unturned and no error, no matter how small, unpunished.