SARS eFiling Troubleshooting Guide for Tax Practitioners
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SARS has reissued the guide that governs how individual income tax returns are submitted on eFiling. CIBA has published a companion troubleshooting tool that maps every failure point in it to the action required and the party who must take it.
What SARS issued
The document is the Guide to submit your Individual Income Tax Return via eFiling, effective 24 July 2026. It is more than a process manual. This revision documents the system changes that have driven most practitioner queries this season, and it records the error messages those changes produce. The substantive items are:
Biometric facial recognition is now required before security contact details can be updated, and the OTP is sent to one preferred channel only, either SMS or email.
The Auto-Assessment waiting room is formalised. During peak periods individual profiles are diverted to a read-only page where the ITA34 and ITR12 can be viewed but no work can be done. Where high volume restrictions are active, there is no route through to full eFiling at all.
A Declaration Questionnaire may be issued after submission where a return is selected for verification or audit. Answers are due within 24 working hours, calculated as eight working hours per day.
Banking changes now require an OTP and are verified before the profile updates. An incorrect account number leaves the return saved rather than filed.
Requests for Correction are more restricted. Six situations block an RFC, and nothing older than three years can be corrected where the result would be a reduced assessment.
Auto-assessments are estimated assessments raised under section 95 of the Tax Administration Act. Section 95 has been amended so a return or relevant material may be submitted after an estimate without first requesting an extension.
Section 98 total discharges show as Cancelled across every version of a return, with no correction, payment or dispute available on that assessment.
The numbers that determine outcomes
Five figures in the guide carry direct consequences: 24 working hours for the Declaration Questionnaire, 15 working days to answer a verification letter, understatement penalties of up to 200%, administrative penalties of up to R16 000 where a taxpayer wrongly declares no South African bank account, and a five year limit on how far back an individual can request a return on eFiling. Registered tax practitioners can request older returns.
As we reported in 2026 Tax Filing Season Changes, this season was rebuilt around third party data and self-service. Revision 32 is the operating manual for that shift.
CIBA’s reference guide
CIBA has summarised the SARS guidance into a practical troubleshooting reference for members. It covers ten stages in the order a return moves through eFiling, from login to payment, with 110 documented failure points.
Each entry records the symptom, the likely cause, the action required, the deadline that applies, who must act, and the exact SARS reference by section, sub-paragraph and page number.
It also isolates the five failures that stop a return dead. Three of them, a duplicate IRP5, a tax directive mismatch on a lump sum, and an invalid IT3(BO) number, cannot be resolved from inside the return at all. The employer, the fund administrator or the appointed representative must act first, and the IRP5 or IT3(a) data must then be refreshed. This reference guide should be used together with the SARS guide.
You can download ITR12 CIBA Troubleshooting Guide here.
One practical step
Assign one person in the practice to check the Income Tax Work Page daily for every submitted return. The Declaration Questionnaire status appears there, and a 24 working hour window will not survive a weekly review. The pre-filing checks in SARS Filing Season Is Open. Here's What to Do First. remain the right starting point.
