I haven't had an interaction with SARS eFiling that didn't involve a screwup on their part. I thought that at least one of them wasn't — I was surprised at how well my 2006/2007 return process was.  But, it seems, while I was happy with the 2006/2007 return, SARS isn't.

I first contacted SARS eFiling in September 2003 with query, and posted "SARS efiling unsupportive" a month later when I hadn't received a reply.  I sent reminders in October 2003 and March 2004 prompting the post "SARS eFiling still unsupportive". In July 2004, after another reminder, I posted "SARS eFiling unrepentantly still unsupportive", and I wasn't the only one complaining.  In August 2004, I contacted the SARS service monitoring office, and got my first reply about this ever, as documented in "Finally hear from SARS".

In this reply, it was made clear that the email and telephone support for eFiling was handled by an external company.  This struck me as troublesome, but it was also made clear that the fact I hadn't got any replies "remains the responsibility of SARS I believe and we will make sure that your e-mail is responded to".  That's the attitude!

Shortly thereafter, I received a reply from Interfile (obviously someone needed a fire lit under them), the people who run eFiling, prompting "Interfile replies about efiling".  I found their old-world thinking a bit scary — they wanted me not to divulge to people that they were working on improving their site!  Can't say I enjoyed my subsequent interactions with them — including saying they'd be happy to reply to further queries, but not doing so when I had some.

At some point thereafter, I signed up with eFiling.  Because of their inane policy of auto-appending a number to the username you want, you spend more time trying to remember your username than your password.  Also, you need to fax (FAX?!  WTF?!) some authorisation to them to activate your account, so I gave up.

The 2006/2007 return season came, and I used the PDF return.  It worked beautifully (or so I thought).

Post 2006/2007 return season, I finally authorised my eFiling account, hoping to be able to do my provisional tax returns with it.  However, somehow two accounts were created for me and all sorts of weirdness (possibly due to migration issues, since I'd set my account up quite some time before authorising).

Because of the two accounts, I couldn't start from scratch over again to correct the problem.  When I complained to SARS about this, I had to go through three different call centers, including getting routed back to one after being directed to another, and getting my call unceremonially cut off somewhere.  Eventually I got to a person who could fix my problem.  And he did.  Which was awesome.  And I did my provisional tax return (or, at least, I hope I did).

However, it seems the 2006/2007 income tax return wasn't submitted correctly, maybe because of my weird account configuration on eFiling.  I get a call from SARS asking me about the 2006/2007 return.  I can't express how disappointed I feel at this point, and tell them I submitted it through eFiling.  I check eFiling, and the return isn't there.  Maybe it was deleted when my double accounts problem was fixed?  Maybe it was a problem at submission time?  Who knows?

Anyway, I have an email from eFiling thanking me for my submission of the tax return, which I've faxed to SARS now.  Hopefully that prevents undue penalties due to their failure.  (I've already done that once, thank you very much.)

However, I'm very disappointed at how SARS and eFiling are being operated as two totally different entities, and how SARS is unable to verify things about me in eFiling "because you have your username and password".  eFiling is an interface SARS provides to me as a taxpayer, and any brokenness in eFiling is entirely the responsibility of SARS, and "it isn't us, it is a company we outsource to" is not an excuse.