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Scam alert · 9 October 2026

Fake SARS payment demands

Notices dressed up as SARS say you owe tax and must pay into the account they give within days, but SARS doesn't take payment that way.

What’s happening

Notices that look as if they come from SARS are telling people they owe tax, usually a few thousand rand, and must pay within days or face legal action, a court summons or blacklisting. Some are a “Notice of Assessment” on SARS letterhead with banking details to pay into; others are an email from “SARS Attorneys” with a button to view an “overdue statement”. SARS has published three of them since early August, during tax filing season, when a letter from SARS is easy to believe.

What it looks like

SARS Debtors Team

Email

Letter of Demand: overdue amount, ref. WSB-40213KD

Dear Taxpayer,

A Letter of Demand has been issued for an overdue amount of R3 150.00 on your tax account. Pay it into the SARS account in the attached notice, using the reference shown.

Court summons and blacklisting will follow if this is not attended to within 48 hours.

SARS Attorneys · Debt Collection

View overdue statement

Notice_of_Assessment_ITA34.pdf

A reconstruction. The names, amounts and references are made up.

The giveaway

SARS's payment rules replaced its bank account numbers with beneficiaries already listed in your banking app, such as SARS-ITA and SARS-PAYE, so a notice that gives you an account number to pay into isn't from SARS.

What to do

  1. Don't pay from the notice, and don't open its link or attachment, however official the letterhead looks.
  2. Check what you owe on eFiling or the SARS MobiApp, opened the way you always do, never from the message.
  3. Already paid, or typed in your eFiling details? Call your bank's fraud line on the number on your card, tell IT if it happened on a work device, and report it to SARS's fraud hotline on 0800 00 2870.

Sources

Scams change quickly. This is what we understood on 9 October 2026; check anything important through official channels.

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