Tax & SARS · 20 September 2026 · 6 min read
Got a side hustle, rental property or other income? Your SARS auto-assessment for 2026 might not be telling the whole story.
Millions of South Africans received a SARS auto-assessment in July 2026. An SMS arrives, SARS has done the calculation, and maybe there’s even a refund heading your way. Lovely. Except there’s one fairly important question: did SARS have the whole picture? If you earn a salary and your tax affairs are straightforward, your auto-assessment may be spot on. But if you’ve got rental income, freelance work, a side hustle, foreign income or deductions SARS doesn’t already know about, there’s a little more homework to do. Because SARS is clever. It isn’t psychic.
The short version
Instead of waiting for you to complete your tax return, SARS uses information it has already received from third parties to calculate your tax position. That could include information from your employer, banks and financial institutions, your medical scheme, retirement funds and insurers. If everything SARS has received tells the complete story, you may not need to submit a tax return at all. That’s the beauty of an auto-assessment. The problem comes when what SARS knows and what actually happened during your tax year aren’t quite the same thing.
“SARS didn’t include it” isn’t a tax strategy.
Your auto-assessment is largely built from information reported to SARS by third parties. So don’t assume that because something isn’t showing on the assessment, SARS has decided it doesn’t matter. That’s a dangerous assumption. You still need to look at the assessment and ask: does this actually reflect my full tax position for the year? SARS itself tells taxpayers to check that their assessments are complete. If you’ve received rental or other income, or have deductions that aren’t reflected, you may need to submit an updated return.
Here are a few of the usual suspects.
Got a normal job but also invoice a few clients after hours? Maybe you consult, design, build, repair, teach, sell or do freelance work on the side. That income doesn’t become tax-free because it happened after 5pm. If it isn’t already reflected in the information SARS has received, you may need to declare it yourself.
Renting out a flat, house, cottage or room? That income needs to be considered when completing your tax return. For example, if you rent out a cottage for R7,000 a month for the full year, that’s R84,000 of gross rental income. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be taxed on the full R84,000, because qualifying rental expenses may be deductible. But the starting point is making sure the rental activity is actually declared.
Working overseas? Receiving foreign investment income? Earning money from an international client? Foreign income can introduce a whole new layer of tax considerations, including your tax residency, where the income arose, and whether a double taxation agreement or foreign tax credit applies. This isn’t an area where we’d recommend assuming the auto-assessment has worked everything out for you.
Working from the couch with a laptop unfortunately doesn’t turn your lounge into a tax deduction. There are specific requirements for claiming home-office expenditure. But if you do qualify, don’t assume the deduction has automatically found its way into your assessment.
Your medical scheme reports information to SARS, but that doesn’t necessarily mean every qualifying medical expense you’ve personally paid is already reflected correctly. If you’ve had qualifying out-of-pocket medical expenditure, it’s worth checking what SARS actually has before deciding your assessment is complete.
Great. We like refunds too. But a refund hitting your bank account doesn’t necessarily prove that every piece of information on the assessment was correct. It tells you what SARS calculated using the information available to it. If relevant income wasn’t included in that information, the calculation could still change once the complete picture is taken into account. And if undeclared income is picked up later, you could be looking at additional tax, interest and, depending on the circumstances, penalties. Suddenly that quick refund doesn’t feel quite as exciting.
Start by actually reading it. We know, revolutionary stuff. Then compare the information on the assessment with what happened during your tax year:
If everything is complete and correct, no unnecessary tax gymnastics are required. If it isn’t, update and submit your tax return through eFiling or the SARS MobiApp by the deadline that applies to you. For most non-provisional individual taxpayers, the 2026 filing deadline is 23 October 2026. Provisional taxpayers have until 22 January 2027.
Auto-assessments are convenient, and when all the information is there they can make tax season considerably easier. But automatic doesn’t mean infallible. If you’ve got rental income, freelance or side-hustle income, foreign income or anything else that doesn’t fit neatly into the standard salary-and-medical-aid box, it’s worth checking what SARS has against what actually happened during the year. At Steyn Smal and Associates, that’s exactly what we do. We look at the numbers, identify what’s missing, check what can legitimately be claimed, and make sure the return tells the full story, without declaring more than you should or quietly leaving something out that comes back to bite later. Take a look at our Tax & Compliance services, or book a consultation and we’ll help you make sure “done” really means done.
Auto-assessed by SARS? Make sure “done” really means done.
We’ll check what SARS has against what your return should say, before you accept it.
If your auto-assessment is complete and correct, you don’t need to submit another return. If information is incorrect or missing, you can update your ITR12 and submit it through eFiling or the SARS MobiApp by the applicable deadline.
Depending on your circumstances, this could include rental income, freelance or side-hustle income, certain foreign income, and deductions or expenses that aren’t already reflected in the information available to SARS. The important part is not assuming something is there. Check.
If information is missing or incorrect, you should amend and submit your tax return. If income that should have been declared is identified later, you could face additional tax, interest and, depending on the circumstances, penalties.
Not necessarily. A refund means SARS calculated that a refund was due based on the information used for the assessment. You should still check that your income, deductions and other relevant information are complete.
For most non-provisional individual taxpayers, the deadline is 23 October 2026. For provisional taxpayers, the filing deadline is 22 January 2027.
Don’t panic, but don’t ignore it either. Check whether the income and any relevant expenses or deductions have been correctly dealt with. If the assessment is incomplete, update and submit your ITR12 by the deadline that applies to you. And if you’re not sure, that’s what we’re here for.
