The move is part of the tax agency's wider plan to modernise its IT platforms. Sars has requested companies with the skills and experience in advanced AI systems to showcase their capabilities and help it "understand the capabilities and offerings of potential partners".
It said it wants to build an "intelligent tax and customs administration platform and broader tax ecosystem that depends on and embeds advanced data science and artificial intelligence, while augmenting the work of our employees with insights from data", said Sars in the RFP. "We are therefore building on our existing work to harness the transformative power of people, data science and AI in tax administration."
Sars said it aims to incorporate AI-driven automated decision making across the organisation. However, its pilot use case - which it will use to evaluate AI solutions - involves a process where taxpayers submit reasons and supporting documents seeking outcomes favourable to them.
Sars said it wants to deploy systems that are capable of:
- 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
- Integrating seamlessly with existing Sars systems
- Operating securely within the regulatory constraints of the public sector
- Supporting explainability and auditability while keeping human agents in the loop for oversight and
- Enabling future scalability to other Sars business processes beyond the initial use case.
The deadline for answering the RFI is 11am on 4 July 2025, Sars said. - 2025 NewsCentral Media