As South Africans prepared to tackle their taxes at the start of the 2025 filing season on Monday, 7 July, excitement quickly turned into frustration.
Instead of breezing through the process, thousands of taxpayers found themselves stuck—thanks to a barrage of tech troubles on the SARS eFiling platform.
Early Auto-Assessments, But Big Login Issues
Some users received their auto-assessment notices from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) as early as Sunday, which seemed like a good start.
But by Monday morning, trying to access the SARS eFiling system felt like wading through digital quicksand.
Pages failed to load, the system timed out, and users were left staring at error messages.
Call Centre Chaos Adds to the Stress
Many who tried calling SARS’ support centre didn’t find much relief either.
The call centre was overwhelmed, with long wait times and dropped calls making an already stressful day even worse for those just trying to do the right thing and file their taxes.
SARS Issues a Public Apology
By Monday afternoon, SARS had no choice but to come clean about the chaos.
In a post shared across its social media platforms, the agency apologised for the meltdown:
“Our system is currently experiencing unusually high traffic volumes.
We value your experience and appreciate your patience as our dedicated teams work diligently to resolve the issue and restore full service as quickly as possible.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Taxpayers Left Venting Online
Frustrated users took to social media to share screenshots, vent, and ask one another whether anyone else was experiencing the same login nightmares.
It’s clear that while SARS made an effort to launch auto-assessments early, the system wasn’t fully prepared for the flood of users trying to access the platform all at once.