Accessing clients’ returns older than five years has become a challenge for tax practitioners, leading to complaints to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). In order to deal with this problem, tax practitioners need to confirm their status on eFiling before trying to request or submit these returns. After successfully reconfirming their status, tax practitioners can then proceed with these requests or submissions.

In addition, tax administrators connected to tax practitioners face a challenge as they are currently unable to request or submit old returns, creating an unfair burden on the tax practitioners. SARS has made a change that allows tax administrators associated with tax practitioners to request or submit returns older than five years.