The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has committed itself to a service charter, that involves deadlines by which it will answer your telephone calls, respond to your correspondence and process your tax return. The SARS Service Charter and Service Standards commits SARS to certain goals that it aims to institute by 2007.
The charter commits SARS to:
- Answer 90 percent of calls by taxpayers within 20 seconds.
- Attend to 95 percent of visitors to a SARS branch office within 15 minutes of arrival (without an appointment).
- Respond within 21 working days to 80 percent of all correspondence.
- Process and assess 80 percent of correctly completed and signed income tax returns within 90 working days during peak periods (July to February).
- Process and assess 80 percent of correctly completed and signed tax returns within 34 working days from the date of receipt in off-peak periods (March to June).
- Process 90 percent of all electronically submitted export and import returns within four hours of receipt, and all manually submitted export and import returns within 24 hours of receiving them.
- Process VAT refunds in 21 working days of receipt.
- Process income tax return refunds within 30 working days from the assessment date.