The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) system featuring “digital twinning” capabilities. This initiative aims to enhance automated decision-making and is a key part of SARS’s broader strategy to modernize its IT platforms and significantly boost tax collection.
Read: Honor unveils the world’s thinnest foldable, the Magic V5
SARS is inviting companies with expertise in advanced AI systems to showcase their capabilities. The goal is to “understand the capabilities and offerings of potential partners” as SARS seeks to build an “intelligent tax and customs administration platform and broader tax ecosystem.” This platform will heavily rely on and embed advanced data science and AI, while simultaneously augmenting the work of SARS employees with data-driven insights. The RFI states that SARS is “building on our existing work to harness the transformative power of people, data science and AI in tax administration.”
While SARS plans to integrate AI-driven automated decision-making across its entire organization, the initial pilot use case for evaluating AI solutions will focus on a process where taxpayers submit justifications and supporting documents to seek favourable outcomes.
SARS has outlined several key capabilities it expects from the proposed AI systems:
- Mimicking human decision logic using AI and machine-learning models.
- Integrating structured and unstructured data, rules, natural language processing, and human logic “twinning” to enable real-time decision-making at scale.
- Seamless integration with existing SARS systems.
- Secure operation within public sector regulatory constraints.
- Support for explainability and auditability, maintaining human oversight.
- Scalability to other SARS business processes beyond the initial pilot.
See also
Digitalization has been a crucial factor in SARS’s improved performance in recent years. In the 2025 national budget, SARS received an allocation of R7.5 billion over the medium term, with R3 billion specifically earmarked for technology upgrades. These upgrades include hiring additional IT experts and implementing new digital systems.
SARS aims to increase tax collection by between R20 billion and R50 billion in the current tax year. The agency views advanced technologies, particularly data analytics and AI tools, as vital to achieving this target. These tools will also be used more extensively to detect compliance risks and enhance overall tax compliance.
SARS emphasizes that this RFI is a “market engagement exercise” and “does not constitute a formal procurement process.” Its purpose is to inform SARS’s strategy, solution design, and potential future procurement of an enterprise-grade AI-driven digital twinning platform for cognitive decision automation.
