{"id":839612,"date":"2025-10-10T14:26:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=839612"},"modified":"2025-10-10T14:26:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:26:54","slug":"important-sars-fraud-warning-to-taxpayers-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/839612\/important-sars-fraud-warning-to-taxpayers-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Important SARS fraud warning to taxpayers in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The South African Revenue Services (SARS) has issued another alert about a new scam doing the rounds, looking to defraud taxpayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scam follows well-tread phishing patterns, with communications via email parading as official SARS notices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The communications try to stir panic among taxpayers by presenting as a &#8216;Settlement Notification&#8217;, urging recipients to take action by a set date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The emails threaten legal action and steep fines and penalties for any taxpayer that does not comply. The notice very closely mimics SARS&#8217; official communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It then prompts recipients to open a PDF attachment, coercing taxpayers to make payments to accounts with fraudulent bank details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This scam represents the latest in a long list of tactics targeting taxpayers and taking advantage of the heightened awareness around tax season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>October is the final month for non-provisional taxpayers to file their tax returns and resolve their tax affairs, with the closing date set at 20 October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past months, SARS, banks and tax practitioners have noted spikes in fraudulent activity as scammers moved out in full force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest scams join these others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Threats of SARS issuing court summonses against taxpayers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Threats of SARS blacklisting taxpayers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Threats of SARS issuing stop orders on accounts<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Notice of outstanding amounts owed to taxpayers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Notice of outstanding amounts owed to SARS<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Notice of delayed payments pending FICA review<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alerts of pending or active SARS audits<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><em>Latest:<\/em><\/strong> <em>Urgent<\/em> <em>Settlement Notice<\/em> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Examples of these scams and more can be seen on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sars.gov.za\/targeting-tax-crime\/scams-and-phishing\/\"><strong>SARS\u2019 scams page<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SARS urged taxpayers to avoid clicking on any suspect links, attachments, and to be extremely wary when paying money into bank accounts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It said taxpayers should <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sars.gov.za\/individuals\/how-do-i-pay\/make-a-payment\/\"><strong>review how payments are made to SARS<\/strong><\/a>, and familiarise themselves with the legitimate methods and processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Specifically, users will not be directed to make payments via email, but rather directed to either eFiling\/MobiApp or to pay via EFT, with banking details already pre-loaded by the banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When making a payment to SARS through eFiling, the system will send a payment request to the taxpayer\u2019s bank which will reflect the amount that needs to be paid on the relevant bank product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The taxpayer then authorises this request on the relevant bank product. This forms an instruction to the bank to make the payment to SARS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Payment may be made via the internet banking through EFTs, but taxpayers select the SARS beneficiary from the standard drop-down listing of pre-loaded beneficiary IDs provided by the bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All SARS beneficiary IDs are prefixed with the naming convention \u201cSARS- \u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SARS provided further advice on how to spot and avoid being scammed by criminals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Do not open or respond to emails from unknown sources.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Beware of emails that ask for personal, tax, banking and eFiling details (login credentials, passwords, pins, credit\/debit card information, etc.).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>SARS will never request your banking details in any communication you receive via post, email, or SMS.<\/strong> However, for the purpose of telephonic engagement and authentication, SARS will verify your personal details. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>SARS will not send you hyperlinks to other websites<\/strong>\u2014even those of banks.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Beware of false SMSes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>SARS will never ask for your credit card details.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To report or to get more information on phishing, please send an email to\u00a0phishing@sars.gov.za.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tax season 2025 dates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><div class=\"table-responsive\"><table class=\"table\" class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><thead><tr><th>Income Taxpayer<\/th><th class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Open<\/th><th class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Close<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>Auto-Assessments<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><s>7 July 2025<\/s><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><s>20 July 2025<\/s><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Individual<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><s>21 July 2025<\/s><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-luminous-vivid-orange-color\"><strong>20 October 2025<\/strong><\/mark><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Provisional<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><s>21 July 2025<\/s><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">19 January 2026<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Trusts<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><s>20 September 2025<\/s><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">19 January 2026<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Revenue Services (SARS) has issued another alert about a new scam doing the rounds, looking to defraud taxpayers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":810017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[1334,3246,2504],"class_list":["post-839612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-fraud","tag-sars","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839616,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839612\/revisions\/839616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}