SARS auto-assessment 2026 — what changed, how to check, how to dispute

In the first two weeks of July, several million South Africans get a text message from SARS saying their tax return has already been done for them. No forms, no eFiling wrestling match — just a number, and a refund or a bill attached to it. It feels like a gift. It is also, for a meaningful slice of people, wrong — not because SARS made a mistake, but because the auto-assessment can only know what someone else told it about you.

This is the guide to the SARS auto-assessment 2026 round. What an auto-assessment actually is, the dates SARS has published for this year, the one genuinely new thing for 2026, how to check yours and read it against your IRP5, and — the part that matters — what to do if it doesn’t look right, and by when.

What an auto-assessment actually is

An auto-assessment is a pre-completed income tax return (an ITR12) that SARS calculates for you, without you submitting anything. It does this by pulling the third-party data it already holds:

• your IRP5/IT3(a) from your employer (salary, PAYE, allowances),
• IT3(b) interest and IT3(c) capital-gains certificates from your bank and investment houses,
• your medical scheme contribution certificate,
• your retirement fund contribution data,
• and certificates from insurers and other registered providers.

SARS adds it all up, applies the rates and rebates for the tax year being assessed — the year that ended 28 February 2026 — and issues an assessment that says one of two things: you overpaid, here is your refund, or you underpaid, here is what you owe. You are notified by SMS or email — in batches, so not everyone gets theirs on the same day.

The thing to hold onto before we go further: an auto-assessment is only as complete as the data SARS received. It knows what your employer, bank and medical scheme reported. It does not know about the deductions you have to claim yourself. More on that below, because that gap is where most of the money is.

The 2026 auto-assessment dates

SARS has published the Filing Season 2026 calendar. The auto-assessment window is the first event on it:

• Auto-assessments issued: 1–12 July 2026. Notifications go out in batches across these two weeks.
• “My Auto-Assessment Status” on the SARS Online Query System (SOQS) lets you check whether you’re in the population from the start of the window (1 July 2026), before your SMS arrives.
• Non-provisional individuals: 13 July – 23 October 2026 to file a return if you were not auto-assessed, or if you were and need to change something.
• Provisional taxpayers and trusts: 13 July 2026 – 22 January 2027.

Note the shift: in 2025 the window opened on 7 July. For 2026 it starts on the 1st. So an assessment may be sitting in your inbox before you think to look for it — and, as you’ll see below, the deadline to change it doesn’t wait for you to notice.

The employer side of this same calendar — the EMP501 reconciliation that produced your IRP5 in the first place — is in the employer tax filing calendar.

What’s new for 2026: the two-pot catch

The one substantive change this year is about the two-pot retirement system.

If you made a savings-withdrawal benefit from your retirement fund in the 2026 tax year, your fund deducted PAYE on it using a directive from SARS — at an estimated marginal rate. But a withdrawal gets added on top of your other income, and if that estimate was too low (common when you have more than one income source), you underpaid. Previously, someone who only earned a salary and took a two-pot withdrawal might not have been required to file at all, and the shortfall could sit unnoticed.

For 2026, SARS is pulling those people into the auto-assessment population specifically to settle the two-pot tax. If you took a savings withdrawal, expect an auto-assessment even if you’ve never had to file before — and expect it to possibly show an amount owing rather than a refund. That is not an error; it is the system reconciling the estimated directive rate against your actual marginal rate. The savings-pot withdrawal is added to your income and taxed at your marginal rate — unlike a full retirement or resignation lump sum, which uses the separate retirement lump-sum tables — and any under- or over-deduction is squared up here, on assessment.

SARS has also been expanding the auto-assessment net more broadly. It began including selected provisional taxpayers in 2025, by invitation, and the eligible population has grown year on year. So the practical takeaway is the same for everyone: don’t assume “I don’t get auto-assessed” still holds in 2026. Check.

How to check your auto-assessment online

Three ways in, all showing the same assessment:

1. eFiling — log in at sarsefiling.co.za, and your auto-assessment appears under Returns. This is the most comfortable channel for editing and re-filing.
2. The SARS MobiApp — the fastest way to view the result and accept it; it can file too, but the small screen makes it harder to check every figure.
3. The SARS Online Query System (SOQS) — the “My Auto-Assessment Status” tool tells you whether you’re in the auto-assessment population at all, before any notice arrives.

One discipline: wait for the SMS or email before you act. Because notices are released in batches between 1 and 12 July, an assessment you check on the 2nd might still be missing a certificate that hasn’t been loaded yet. But the deadline clock runs from the notice date whether or not you saw it — so if a notification is delayed or lands in spam, check eFiling or the status tool yourself in early July rather than relying only on the SMS arriving.

Reading it against your IRP5

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that costs them. Open your assessment next to your IRP5 and the certificates you actually received, and check three things.

Is the income right? The auto-assessment’s income figure should match your IRP5 codes 3601–3699 plus any allowances. If you had more than one employer in the year, make sure both IRP5s are reflected — a missing second IRP5 is the classic way an assessment understates your income and overstates your refund.

Is the third-party data complete? Medical scheme credits (codes 4005/4116), retirement fund contributions and investment interest should all be there. If your medical scheme or fund certified late, the figure may be missing or stale.

What did SARS not know about? This is the big one. The auto-assessment contains only third-party data. It does not include the deductions you have to claim yourself:

• contributions to a retirement annuity you pay privately (not through payroll),
• medical expenses you paid out of pocket above the scheme, and the additional credit for disability,
• section 18A donations to registered PBOs,
• rental income and expenses, or freelance / side income,
• travel-allowance claims backed by a logbook,
• home-office expenses, where you qualify.

If any of these apply to you, accepting the auto-assessment as-is means leaving a deduction (and a bigger refund) on the table — or, in the case of rental and side income, under-declaring and exposing yourself later. You have to file an edited return to add them.

Accept, edit, or dispute your auto-assessment

There are three doors, and people confuse them.

Accept (do nothing). If you agree with the assessment and have nothing to add, there is genuinely nothing to do. If a refund is due it pays automatically; if you owe, pay by the date on the notice. The return is treated as filed.

Edit and re-file. If something is missing — a deduction SARS couldn’t know about, a second IRP5, rental income — open the return on eFiling, complete it properly, and submit. This replaces the auto-assessment with your version.

Dispute the third-party data. If the underlying certificate is wrong — your medical scheme reported the wrong contribution, say — you generally cannot edit that figure yourself. The institution that submitted it has to correct and re-submit it to SARS. Contact them first; then re-file once the corrected data flows through.

The deadline to change it

The date that matters: if you were auto-assessed and you want to edit and re-file, you can change your return and submit it on or before 23 October 2026 (the Filing Season deadline for non-provisional individuals). That’s the same deadline as everyone who has to file a normal return — auto-assessment doesn’t shorten it.

There is one wrinkle. If your auto-assessment is issued after the 23 October deadline — a late assessment — you instead get 40 business days from the date of that notice, whichever is later. For the ordinary early-July assessment, though, 23 October is your date.

If you genuinely can’t meet it — a certificate is still outstanding — you can apply to SARS for an extension, with reasons, rather than letting the deadline pass.

And it does matter that you act inside that window. Once the deadline lapses without you re-filing, the auto-assessment becomes your final assessment. From that point the simple edit-and-refile route is closed, and the only way to change it is the formal objection (a Notice of Objection, or NOO) — a separate, heavier process for disputing a finalised assessment, not the first tool you reach for on a fresh auto-assessment. Hitting the deadline keeps you on the easy road.

Who can’t be auto-assessed

If your tax affairs go beyond third-party data, SARS won’t (and can’t reliably) auto-assess you. You file the normal way if you have:

• business, freelance or sole-proprietor income,
• foreign income or you’re claiming foreign tax credits,
• capital gains beyond what your IT3(c) covers,
• complex share-option or other equity events not yet matched, or
• you’re a provisional taxpayer SARS hasn’t selected.

If you’re a provisional taxpayer, the “My Auto-Assessment Status” tool will tell you whether you were included; if not, file your normal return by 22 January 2027. And if you fall in any of these groups but still received an auto-assessment, treat it as a starting point, not a finish line — edit and file the full return.

If SARS owes you

If your banking details are verified, you have no outstanding debt or returns, and you’re not flagged for review, a refund of R 100 or more is paid automatically — SARS targets 72 hours from the assessment. Amounts under R 100 roll over to your next tax year rather than being paid out.

So why does a refund sometimes take six weeks? Usually one of these: your bank details aren’t verified (SARS holds the refund until they are); you’ve been selected for verification (SARS works to up to 21 business days once it has all your supporting documents) or for a full audit (which can run up to 90 business days); or there’s an old debt on another tax type that the refund is set off against first. Check your eFiling correspondence — the hold-up is almost always documented there.

If you owe SARS

If the assessment shows an amount payable, it’s due by the date on the notice — not 23 October. Pay via eFiling (credit push or a set-up debit), EFT using SARS’s public beneficiary and your payment reference, or at a bank. If you can’t pay in full, apply for a payment arrangement on eFiling rather than ignoring it: interest accrues on the outstanding amount, and SARS can appoint your employer or bank as an agent to collect once a debt is final.

What payloop does with all of this

The auto-assessment is a genuine convenience, and for someone with a single salary, a medical scheme and nothing else, accepting it is usually exactly right. The trap is treating convenience as completeness. SARS built your assessment from what your employer and your providers reported — so the quality of that return starts with the quality of the IRP5 your employer files. Getting that certificate right, every code in its right place, is the part we obsess over at payloop, because it’s the data your auto-assessment is built on. If you run payroll and want the IRP5s your team files in February to be the kind that make July boring, book a 30-minute working session and we’ll walk through it.

For everyone else: read your assessment, read it against your own paperwork, and if it doesn’t add up, don’t sleep on the 23 October deadline.

Common questions

When does the SARS auto-assessment start in 2026?

Auto-assessments are issued between 1 and 12 July 2026, in batches. You can check whether you’re in the auto-assessment population from the start of that window using the “My Auto-Assessment Status” tool on the SARS Online Query System, but wait for your SMS or email before acting on the assessment itself.

How do I check my SARS auto-assessment online?

Log in to eFiling at sarsefiling.co.za or the SARS MobiApp and open the assessment under your returns. To check only whether you’ve been selected, use the “My Auto-Assessment Status” tool on the SARS Online Query System.

How do I dispute a SARS auto-assessment that’s wrong?

It depends on what’s wrong. If a deduction or income source is missing, open the return on eFiling, complete it correctly, and re-file on or before 23 October 2026 — this replaces the auto-assessment. (If your assessment is issued after that deadline, you instead have 40 business days from the notice.) If the error is in third-party data — a wrong medical or fund certificate — the institution that submitted it must correct and re-submit it to SARS; you can’t edit that figure yourself. Miss the deadline and the assessment finalises, after which the only route is a formal objection.

Can I opt out of the SARS auto-assessment?

There’s no “opt out” switch. If you disagree with the auto-assessment or have something to add, you simply file your own return within the filing window (by 23 October 2026 for non-provisional individuals), and your return supersedes the auto-assessment.

Why did I get an auto-assessment this year when I never have before?

The most likely reason for 2026 is a two-pot savings withdrawal. SARS is now auto-assessing people who made a savings-withdrawal benefit from their retirement fund — even those who weren’t previously required to file — to reconcile the tax on that withdrawal. SARS has also been steadily expanding the auto-assessment population year on year.