The latest tax season by the numbers

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) said on Monday that it paid out "an astounding R15.5bn in tax refunds" to 1.98-million taxpayers end of Tax Season.

It had "imposed penalties to the value of R1.64bn on defaulting taxpayers" by Friday’s deadline for nonprovisional taxpayers.

"Taxpayers who have not submitted their returns are urged to do so immediately‚" spokesman Sandile Memela said.

Other provisional statistics for the 2015-16 tax year released by SARS include:

• 5.74-million: number of returns received by the close of tax season;

• 4.16-million: the number of submissions made by individuals;

• 47,000: the number of submissions made by trusts;

• 1.52-million: the number returns for previous tax years from individuals and trusts;

• 3.6-million: the number of calls the SARS Contact Centre handled;

• 5.1-million: the number of taxpayers SARS branch offices assisted;

• 99.9%: proportion of returns SARS processed electronically;

• 93.28%: proportion of refunds paid within 72 hours;

• 173,000: number of taxpayers who used the Help You e-File channel — up 15% than in 2014-15;

• 44,373: number of taxpayers who used the SARS mobile app to submit returns; and

• 3 seconds: the time it took SARS to assess most (92.4%) of returns.

TMG Digital