The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has had an overwhelming response to the first week of the tax return filing season, but on the first two days some taxpayers struggled to gain access to the eFiling website and to log on.
This was a result of the high number of taxpayers on the site – more than 300 000 logged on on each of those days.
SARS says that by Tuesday afternoon additional capacity had been put in place for the eFiling service to handle the large volumes of taxpayers accessing the site.
SARS also reduced the timeout period on the site to maximise security and ensure that people who are logged on are actively using the connection.
SARS says that between Monday when the tax season began and noon yesterday 360 608 returns had been submitted, including 235 444 that were submitted on eFiling.
By noon yesterday R889 million had been paid to taxpayers as tax refunds, versus R595 million in 2012 for the same period.