Individuals and tax practitioners most vulnerable to eFiling hijacking

702’s John Perlman speaks with Tax Ombud, Yanga Mputa.

Listen below:

The Office of the Tax Ombud released a draft report on the hijacking of eFiling profiles.

They found that profile hijacking is most prevalent among tax practitioners and individual taxpayers.

“Companies are hit, but it's not prevalent in the companies because companies have got protected websites.”

- Yanga Mputa, Tax Ombud 

Most cases involve Personal Income Tax or VAT, and fraudulent transactions usually involve amounts under R10,000.

However, the fraud can reach up to R100,000.

They found problems largely stem from inadequate authentication processes, issues with fraud detection, slow response times from SARS and low digital security awareness among taxpayers.

They are calling for SARS to improve their authentication protocols and fraud detection.

RELATED: Remain vigilant! 4 precautions to take, while eFiling scams ramp up

“SARS has made a lot of changes in their systems, but still those changes need to be monitored so that they can keep on enhancing them, because the cyber criminals are also upskilling themselves.”

- Yanga Mputa, Tax Ombud 

They also urge taxpayers to use stronger passwords, activate two-factor authentication, and regularly monitor their profiles.

Scroll up to the audio player for more.