The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has apologised to taxpayers for the disruption in services after support for the Adobe Flash Player platform was terminated on 12 January this year.
Until now, Sars had focused on the major tax types with the highest volumes, which are largely completed and operationally stable. However, Sars admits that it erred in its interpretation that the functionality would continue beyond the support date, creating frustration for many taxpayers.
Sars says it had planned the migration of all forms as a priority.
“However, as part of its mandate, Sars administers many taxes and compliance mechanisms with many submission requirements and interactions that require capturing and submitting data through many different forms.”
ALSO READ: Sars offices continue working working remotely for ‘foreseeable future’ due to Covid-19 surge
As well as the high number of forms required to be migrated from Adobe Flash Player to the chosen HTML5 platform, the migration itself is very complex and requires the development, testing and deployment of new forms, Sars explains.
These forms contain many data fields underpinned by thousands of technical, administrative and complex business rules to ensure integrity of data, efficient processing and accurate assessment results.
This complexity and the need to deliver properly tested and working forms required Sars to prioritise the major tax types with the highest volumes, with the remainder planned for 2021.
Sars will implement these remedial actions to assist taxpayers who still experience issues:
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.