How should I respond if an auto assessment leaves out income I earned?

Confirm which assessment you are looking at

Start by opening your own SARS profile through the official channel and identifying the tax year, assessment date and notice. A message about an auto-assessment is a prompt to review the result, not a substitute for reading the underlying information. Keep a copy of the notice and note whether there are any further requests or account amounts to address.

Compare the assessment with the return information for the same year. A new income source that began after the end of that year may belong in a later return, while money received during the year may relate to an earlier transaction. Establish the relevant facts before deciding what is missing.

The SARS auto-assessment guidance explains that data from employers and other institutions helps populate the result. That process cannot be treated as proof that every aspect of your affairs is complete. Your review should compare the information with the full record of your income and relevant circumstances.

Make an income-source checklist

List the sources you had during the year, then mark whether each appears in the return and which document supports it. This is more reliable than comparing the refund or amount payable with the previous year, because a similar result can hide different underlying figures.

Not every bank credit is taxable income, and not every taxable amount is identified by looking only at deposits. A loan or transfer may need a different explanation from earnings. Give the preparer the facts and documents, rather than putting every unexplained credit into one catch-all income category.

Identify whether the source record or your return needs correcting

There are two common routes to investigate. A certificate supplied by an employer, bank or another institution may contain incorrect data. Alternatively, the certificates may be correct while income you must disclose yourself is absent from the return. These problems can require different actions.

SARS directs taxpayers with incorrect third-party data to the issuer for correction. Keep the request specific: identify the certificate, tax year, disputed field and evidence. When the issuer confirms that corrected data has been sent, review the return again before filing. A corrected PDF emailed to you is not by itself proof that the SARS data has changed.

For your own trading activity, gather the records needed to complete the relevant return information. Do not ask your salary employer to alter its IRP5 to include unrelated business earnings. The employer's certificate and your business records have different purposes. If the correct route is unclear, ask SARS or your tax practitioner using the exact notice and documents, so the advice relates to the actual issue.

Check the deadline for this filing season

As checked on 30 September 2026, SARS's auto-assessment page says taxpayers who disagree can change and submit their return by 23 October 2026. This is dated 2026 Filing Season guidance. It should not be reused as the deadline for another year or treated as a substitute for a specific notice affecting your case.

Put the relevant date in your own task list and allow time to obtain corrected certificates or missing business records. If an issuer has not responded, preserve your correspondence and seek guidance before the deadline rather than waiting silently for the problem to resolve itself.

If the deadline has already passed, or the assessment is subject to another process, establish the available correction or dispute route promptly. Do not assume that an ordinary return edit remains available indefinitely. Equally, do not assume every disagreement should immediately be framed as an objection. Explain whether the issue is omitted income, incorrect source data or a disputed treatment, and ask which procedure applies.

Prepare the correction before submitting it

Assemble the missing information in a form that can be checked. For a small business, this may mean a reconciled income-and-expense record rather than a single total of bank deposits. For a certificate issue, retain the original, the issuer's explanation and the corrected record. Make the relationship between those documents clear.

1. Save the original assessment and identify the omitted or incorrect item.
2. Confirm the taxpayer, tax year and supporting source.
3. Obtain or prepare the corrected information.
4. Review all affected return sections and any related amounts.
5. Submit through the applicable official process and retain the acknowledgement.

Use the SARS individual-return guide for current system steps. Where a tax practitioner prepares the correction, ask to review the completed version before it is submitted. Keep your approval tied to that version so subsequent changes remain visible.

A salary and freelance-income example

Imagine an employee whose salary certificate is correctly included in an auto-assessment, but who also completed freelance design projects during the year. The clients paid the employee directly and no employment certificate covers that activity. The automated result therefore needs to be compared with the separate business records.

The employee collects the client invoices, receipts, project-related costs and any unpaid balances, then asks the preparer to determine the correct return entries. Personal transfers in the same account are identified separately. Costs are reviewed for their actual treatment rather than deducted automatically because they were paid from the account used for freelance work.

This example does not predict whether the revised assessment produces a payment or refund. It shows why correct salary data can coexist with an incomplete overall return. The practical objective is to include the missing activity accurately and review the whole calculation. Correcting one income source without checking related fields may leave another inconsistency behind.

Check what SARS actually processed

After submission, open the resulting assessment and compare the relevant figures with the change you intended. Check that the correct year was affected and that the missing item appears as expected. Keep any request for supporting documents with the response deadline and the person responsible for answering it.

Review the account position separately from the assessment calculation. Note any payment due, allocation issue or further action shown. Do not assume a previous refund is the final outcome once new information changes the return, and do not budget around an expected refund before the processing outcome is clear.

If the correction has not produced the expected result, preserve the evidence rather than submitting repeated changes without understanding the problem. Record the reference number, date, return version and the specific difference still visible. A precise follow-up is easier to investigate than a general complaint that the auto-assessment was wrong.

Build the missing source into next year’s routine

Once the issue is resolved, update your personal tax checklist so the same source is checked in future. Keep business and personal records organised throughout the year and review changes in income when they happen. If the new activity may affect provisional tax, address that question separately instead of waiting for the next auto-assessment.

Personal tax return support can help turn the correction into a repeatable review process. Bring the original notice, your income-source checklist and the evidence of what changed. Keep the final return, assessment and correspondence together so you or another authorised preparer can understand the outcome later.

Record which income source was missing and how you identified it, including the relevant account or payer. Use that note when reviewing the next assessment instead of relying on memory of the previous year’s correction.