SARS Auto-Assessment 2026: Should You Accept It or File a Return? (What SARS Can and Cannot See)

What SARS did in the first two weeks of July

Between 1 and 12 July 2026 SARS sent an SMS or email to more than six million people saying their return had been assessed already. There was no form. SARS took the IRP5 your employer filed, the interest certificates from your bank, the medical scheme contribution certificate and the retirement fund certificates, ran them through the individual return, and issued a notice of assessment. By 2 July, its own media release said, 1.9 million people had been assessed and about R8 billion in refunds paid.

Two things changed in 2026. SARS pre-fills more than before: trust distributions from IT3(t) certificates are in, and investment income is filled from the institution’s data rather than typed. And some provisional taxpayers got an auto-assessment for the first time, which matters if you run a company and draw rental or freelance income on the side, because those are the people the pre-filled data covers least.

The notice is not a proposal. Since 2023 there has been no accept button. What SARS issued is your assessment for the 2026 year, and the only way to change it is to file the ITR12, the individual income tax return, with the figures SARS did not have.

What SARS can see, and what it cannot

The assessment is only as complete as the certificates behind it. SARS says the data comes from “employers, financial institutions, medical schemes, retirement fund administrators, and other third-party data providers”. Anyone who reports to SARS under a certificate is in; anything that happens without a certificate is not.

The left column mostly gets you money back. The right column is split: the top three rows are deductions SARS cannot claim for you, so an auto-assessment that ignores them is refunding you too little. The bottom three are income SARS does not know about, so the same assessment is taxing you too little, and that is your problem, not SARS’s.

One trap inside the left column. The IRP5 is what your employer filed, and if the employer got a code wrong or never filed the certificate, the auto-assessment inherits the mistake. Only the employer can fix it, by revising the certificate and resubmitting its reconciliation. The IRP5 guide covers what to do when that happens.

Agree, or file the return yourself

Open the assessment on eFiling, the SARS MobiApp or, from this year, WhatsApp, and read it against your own records. SARS’s guidance is one line: “If you agree with your auto-assessment, there is nothing further to be done.” A refund of R100 or more is paid within 72 hours of the notice. A refund under R100 rolls into next year. If you owe R100 or more, the notice gives the due date; under R100, SARS lets you pay now or carry it.

If the assessment is missing anything in the right-hand column, you do not dispute it and you do not accept it. You file the ITR12 as if there had been no auto-assessment, with the pre-filled figures still there and yours added, and SARS reassesses on the full return. The deadline is the ordinary one for your category: 23 October 2026 if you are not a provisional taxpayer, 22 January 2027 if you are.

Put the certificate figures and the missing deductions into the tax refund calculator first. If the number it gives is within a few hundred rand of the notice, the assessment is probably complete. If it is not, the gap tells you which row of the table to go and find paperwork for.

Provisional taxpayers: the new group, and the one most likely to be wrong

A provisional taxpayer is anyone with income that is not fully taxed at source: rental income, freelance or consulting fees, a director’s fees from a company that did not run PAYE, interest and dividends. There is a floor: if that untaxed income, after the interest exemption, comes to R30,000 or less for the year, you are not provisional. Until this year SARS left this group alone at auto-assessment time, because the pre-filled data cannot see the income that makes them provisional in the first place. In 2026 it sent notices to some of them anyway.

If you got one, treat it as a draft of the salary-and-interest part of your return and nothing else. The rental, the fees and the business income are still yours to add, The two IRP6 payments you made during the year are already on SARS’s ledger and are credited on any assessment, including the automatic one, which is exactly why the notice can show a refund of money you still owe. Your deadline is 22 January 2027, not October, and the provisional tax calculator will show whether the two estimates you paid were enough or whether the final return brings a balance.

Two people who got the same SMS

The figures below are made up to show the shape of the decision, not to predict anyone’s refund.

• A salaried employee in Durban with a travel allowance. Her IRP5 shows a R60,000 travel allowance under code 3701. Her employer withheld PAYE on 80% of it, which is the payroll rule, but on assessment the whole allowance is income and without a logbook nothing comes off, so the notice shows a balance owing of a couple of thousand rand. She kept a logbook: 14,000 business kilometres out of 30,000. Filing the ITR12 with the logbook figures claims the business share as a deduction, and the amount owing turns into a refund. She files by 23 October and the reassessment lands a few days later.
• A company director in Centurion with a flat he lets out. He draws a salary through his own company’s payroll, so his IRP5 is clean. He also earned R96,000 in rent that no certificate reports, and paid two IRP6 estimates on it. He is a provisional taxpayer who was auto-assessed for the first time. The notice credits the IRP6 payments but knows nothing about the rent, so it shows a refund of most of what he paid in. Take it, and the rent is untaxed on record until SARS finds it, when the refund comes back with interest and possibly an understatement penalty. He files the full ITR12 by 22 January 2027 with the rental schedule, and the refund shrinks to the small balance the estimates left, which is the correct answer.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of these documents. Check them before quoting a number; the regulators change them without telling anyone who linked the old one.

1. Filing Season 2026, SARS, updated 21 September 2026: the auto-assessment window, the 23 October and 22 January deadlines, and the WhatsApp and Lwazi channels
2. How does Auto-Assessment work?, SARS, 10 July 2026: the third-party data sources, “nothing further to be done” if you agree, refunds of R100 or more within 72 hours, and filing the return if you disagree
3. Changes for Filing Season 2026, SARS, 29 June 2026: certain provisional taxpayers auto-assessed, IT3(t) pre-population, and the WhatsApp notice of assessment
4. Media release: SARS unveils a smarter, simpler, more secure Filing Season, SARS, 2 July 2026: 1.9 million auto-assessed and about R8 billion refunded within 72 hours, six million expected
5. If you do not agree with your auto-assessment, just file your return as normal, SARS, 5 July 2024: the standing instruction that disagreeing means filing the ITR12 with the extra information, not lodging a dispute