Auto-assessment

SARS auto-assessment wrong or incomplete? What to do

An auto-assessment is SARS's estimate built from third-party data. If it is missing income or deductions, you correct it by filing a return yourself, and that is when supporting documents matter.

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Updated 27 July 2026. General information, not tax advice. Confirm current rules on sars.gov.za.

SARS builds auto-assessments from data supplied by employers, medical schemes, banks, retirement funds, and investment platforms. For the 2026 season, notices went out from 1 to 12 July. The data is usually right about what third parties reported, and silent about everything they did not.

If the auto-assessment is correct

You do not need to file. If a refund is due, SARS normally pays it within a few business days. If you owe SARS, pay by the due date shown on the notice.

If it is wrong or incomplete

Open the return on eFiling or the SARS MobiApp, correct it, and file it yourself. For the 2026 season the deadline to do this is 23 October 2026, the same deadline that applies to other non-provisional individual taxpayers. Common reasons to correct an auto-assessment:

  • Deductions the third-party data cannot see: home office, travel against an allowance, out-of-pocket medical expenses, wear and tear.
  • Income SARS does not know about: rental income, freelance or side-hustle income, foreign income.
  • A missing or duplicated IRP5, or a certificate from a scheme or fund that never reached SARS.
Filing a correction invites scrutiny: When you change an auto-assessment, SARS may select the return for verification and ask for supporting documents with a fixed response window. That is expected, not a penalty. It only becomes a problem if your documents are not ready or eFiling rejects the files.

Supporting documents to have ready

  • IRP5/IT3(a) certificates from every employer.
  • Medical aid tax certificate and proof of out-of-pocket medical expenses. See uploading medical aid certificates.
  • Retirement annuity contribution certificates.
  • Travel logbook if you claim against a travel allowance.
  • Home office calculation and expenses if you claim the home office deduction.
  • Invoices and statements for any income you added yourself.

Make the files SARS-ready before uploading

Verification uploads fail for the same reasons as any other eFiling upload: files over 5MB, password-protected PDFs such as bank statements and medical certificates, special characters in filenames, or more than 20 documents. Run each file through the SARS Document Compliance Checker before you upload, and fix problems while you still have time in the response window.

See also filing season 2026 dates, the supporting documents checklist, and SARS upload rejected.