South African Revenue Service (SARS) has warned taxpayers to be aware of emails or SMS’s that ask for personal, tax, banking, and eFiling details indicating that taxpayers are eligible to receive tax refunds OR even where SARS is “owed” monies.
Taxpayers may receive random emails, which are made to look as if these were sent from SARS but which are fraudulent emails aimed at obtaining your personal information (“phishing”) – especially where SARS “refunds” are promised. The scams include emails that appear to be from ‘returns@sars.co.za’ or ‘refunds@sars.co.za’ which are NOT valid SARS addresses.
SARS will never ask for personal, tax, banking, or e-filing details and will never update your banking information without the relevant FICA documentation via official channels (our MD tax department will directly liaise with you where this is required).
SARS will also never provide specific bank account numbers – they rather urge taxpayers to use the official SARS payment channels and not to fall for these fraudulent claims.
Do not open or respond to emails from unknown sources (SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments).
Please contact our Tax department should you have any queries about the validity of any SARS emails.
