SARS assessed you in four seconds. Here's what it missed.

If your SARS auto-assessment is wrong, you do not have to accept it and you do not have to phone SARS. You file the full return yourself on eFiling before the filing deadline (23 October 2026 if you are not a provisional taxpayer), or a registered tax practitioner files it for you. That is work Accounting Connect does for individuals anywhere in South Africa: I am Brandon Iverach, Professional Accountant (SA) and Registered SARS Tax Practitioner PR-0025122, and the practice prepares and submits the corrected return. Send the SMS or the ITA34 and we will tell you what SARS missed. Here is why it misses things.

Sometime in the first two weeks of July, a few million South Africans got the same SMS.

Most people did what I'd probably have done. Scrolled to the number at the bottom, saw a refund, felt briefly pleased, and got on with the day.

Here's the thing about that number. It isn't what you owe. It isn't what you're owed. It's what SARS could work out from what other people told them about you.

An auto-assessment isn't a calculation of your tax. It's a calculation of the part of your tax SARS can see.

SARS expected to auto-assess more than 6 million taxpayers between 1 and 12 July this year. Manual filing opened on 13 July. If you're a non-provisional taxpayer, everything — accepting, correcting, filing from scratch — closes on 23 October 2026.

What SARS actually knows about you

Quite a lot, and more every year. Your employer files your IRP5. Your medical scheme reports your contributions. Your retirement fund reports what you put in. Your bank reports the interest it paid you, and your investment platform reports what it paid out.

That's genuinely impressive, and for a salaried person with a medical aid and nothing else going on, the auto-assessment is probably right.

But read that list again. Every item on it comes from an institution that is legally obliged to report to SARS. Which tells you exactly where the gaps are.

And what it doesn't

SARS has no idea whether you:

• let out a flat, a cottage, or half your house
• ran a side consultancy, took freelance work, or invoiced anyone directly
• kept a logbook against a travel allowance
• paid medical expenses out of your own pocket that the scheme never covered
• gave to a registered charity and hold the section 18A receipt
• sold a property, a share portfolio, or crypto
• earn mainly commission and carry the costs that go with it
• work from home in a room you use for nothing else
• earned anything at all outside South Africa

None of that reaches SARS automatically. It reaches SARS when you put it there.

Now, the part nobody puts in the SMS

Almost every article you'll read on this treats it as a missed refund. Check your assessment, they say, you might be leaving money on the table.

True. But that's the pleasant direction, and it's not the one that should worry you.

The unpleasant direction is income SARS couldn't see. If you let out a property last year and accepted an assessment that says nothing about it, you haven't quietly got away with something. You've confirmed a return that understates what you earned. When SARS catches up — and third-party data is getting better every year, not worse — the bill comes with understatement penalties and interest attached.

SARS didn't make that mistake. You accepted it.

A refund you left behind costs you money once. Income you never declared costs you money with interest, for as long as it takes them to find it.

How long you've actually got

If you were auto-assessed and you agree with it, there's no return to file. That part is real, and it's a genuine improvement.

One caveat, because it catches people. Nothing to file is not the same as nothing to do. If the assessment says you owe, you still have to pay by the date on the notice. If it says you're due a refund, it usually lands within a few days.

If you don't agree — or you know something's missing — you can amend and submit a full return. Non-provisional taxpayers have until 23 October 2026. Provisional taxpayers have until 22 January 2027.

If you weren't auto-assessed at all, filing opened on 13 July and the same October deadline applies to you.

Three months sounds generous. It isn't, particularly, once you've tried to find a section 18A receipt from November.

What to do this week

Not next month. This week, while it's still boring instead of urgent.

Go and collect the documents. All of them, in one place:

1. 1. IRP5 or IT3(a) from every employer
2. 2. Medical aid tax certificate
3. 3. Retirement annuity or pension contribution certificate
4. 4. IT3(b) for bank and interest income
5. 5. IT3(c) for investment disposals
6. 6. Logbook, if you have a travel allowance
7. 7. Rental income and the expenses against it
8. 8. Section 18A donation receipts
9. 9. Details of anything you sold — date, cost, proceeds

That list is not arbitrary. It's the same nine things a return actually asks for, and if you can put your hands on all nine, you're most of the way there.

Then compare. Open the assessment SARS sent you and check it line by line against what you're holding. Not the number at the bottom — the whole thing.

This is the part we built for

Comparing a SARS assessment against a shoebox of certificates is exactly the kind of work that is tedious for a person and trivial for a machine.

So we built the tedious part out. You send through the documents; we capture them and recompute the return independently — properly, off your actual paperwork rather than off the third-party feed. Then you get one number next to another. Here's what SARS assessed. Here's what your documents say. Here's the difference, and here's why.

It isn't clever. It's just arithmetic done on all of your information instead of some of it. But it answers the only question that matters in July, which is whether the assessment you've been sent is the assessment you should be getting.

Go and read your assessment properly. If it's right, you've lost ten minutes. If it isn't, you've got until 23 October — and that is a lot closer than it sounds.

Brandon Iverach is a professional accountant (SA) and registered tax practitioner. This article is general information about the 2026 filing season, not advice on your particular circumstances. Filing season dates are as published by SARS.