Filing season alert: Check who controls your Sars eFiling profile

With the 2026 filing season now under way, taxpayers should treat the South African Revenue Service (Sars) eFiling access and privacy as a compliance risk, not an administrative afterthought.

Taxpayers are warned to be careful of who they appoint as their registered representative, public officer or eFiling profile administrator. Each year, taxpayers focus on IRP5s, medical certificates, investment certificates, rental schedules, bank statements and supporting records.

Those documents matter, but they are of limited use if you cannot access your Sars eFiling profile through which the return must be submitted.

Read: When your Sars refund has nowhere to go

The question is simple, who controls your Sars profile?

For many individuals, companies and trusts, the answer is only discovered when something goes wrong. A return must be filed, Sars requests verification documents, a refund is delayed, a new practitioner is appointed, or a tax type must be transferred.

You then discover that authentication prompts and profile access sit with the accountant who set up your profile years earlier. That is when filing season becomes a legal and financial risk.

When access becomes leverage

The problem often starts innocently. An accountant registers the profile, files the tax returns, receives Sars correspondence and becomes the person relied on to manage compliance. While the relationship works, no one questions the arrangement.

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But relationships end, fees are disputed, accountants stop responding, firms restructure, staff leave, a practitioner may retire, become incapacitated or pass away. The taxpayer may then find that practical control over the Sars profile sits outside their hands.

Outstanding fees do not mean the taxpayer loses the right to their Sars profile or tax records.

Read:
‘eFiling profile hijackings are a systemic problem’ – ombud
eFiling profile hijackings report urges Sarb to look at specific banks

An accountant may, depending on the engagement terms and applicable professional rules, have limited rights in relation to internal working papers or unpaid work product. That is different from withholding eFiling access, Sars correspondence, submitted returns, assessments or taxpayer records.

The taxpayer remains responsible to Sars and remains exposed to penalties, missed deadlines, adverse assessments, verification risks and refund delays. Control over the profile used to manage those obligations must therefore remain with the taxpayer.

The registered representative is not a technicality

For companies and trusts, the registered representative role is not a minor profile setting. It is the authority through which Sars may recognise a person as having rights to act on behalf of the taxpayer’s profile.

That person may receive authentication prompts, approve tax type transfers, manage access to returns and assessments, and authorise a new practitioner.

If that authority sits with an external accountant by default, rather than a director, public officer trustee or properly authorised internal representative, the taxpayer has created an avoidable governance risk.

Read: Tax practitioners and their controlling bodies now held to a higher standard

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For a company, the registered representative or public officer should generally be someone inside the business, such as a director, managing director, CFO, company secretary or another suitable senior official. For a trust, control should generally sit with the main trustee or properly authorised representative.

The accountant or tax practitioner should still assist, but through delegated access under a written mandate. That mandate should record which taxpayer the practitioner may assist, which tax types may be accessed, what work may be performed and for what period.

There are remedies if access is withheld

If an accountant refuses to cooperate, the taxpayer is not without recourse. The taxpayer, or the properly appointed registered representative, can approach Sars to regularise the registered representative position, update the contact details linked to the profile, and approve the transfer of the relevant tax types to the taxpayer or a newly appointed practitioner.

The former accountant should not be treated as the owner of the taxpayer’s Sars profile. Taxpayers must understand the difference between assistance and control.

A practitioner can assist with compliance, but the taxpayer should not be locked out of the very profile through which Sars expects them to comply.

Read: Tax Ombud to reveal findings on eFiling hijackings

Razael Manikus is COO at Latita Africa – tax, legal and advisory.

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