BUSINESS NEWS - A lot of fingers are pointing to the South African Revenue Service (Sars) and some of the banks following a recent survey conducted by the Office of the Tax Ombud to get to the bottom of last year’s surge in hijackings of tax practitioner and individual taxpayer eFiling profiles.

The Office of the Tax Ombud (OTO) is finalising a draft report into its systemic investigation into the origins of the hijackings and the effect on taxpayers and practitioners.

There is an urgency to finalise the report and make recommendations. The filing season generally kicks off in July, and that is when hijackers tend to strike.

The refunds due to individuals make them an attractive target.

Tax Ombud Yanga Mputa this week gave feedback on her office’s survey that established who was affected, which tax types, and the response from Sars and the South African Police Service.

The OTO received the go-ahead from the minister of finance in August last year to investigate the hijackings as a systemic problem.

Several bodies representing tax practitioners as well as South African Tax Practitioners United (Satpu) alerted the Tax Ombud to the issues facing practitioners and their clients last year.

Theo Burrows, secretary-general of Satpu, noted then that the first reports of increased profile hackings surfaced in 2021. The matter gained momentum at the beginning of last year and became the predominant topic on tax practitioner forums around April.

Read more on Caxton publication, The Citizen

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