What is an AA88 from SARS?

An AA88 is a notice appointing an employer as SARS's agent to deduct an employee's outstanding tax debt or administrative penalties from their salary and pay it over to SARS. SARS issues it under section 179(1) of the Tax Administration Act, after the employee has received a final demand and not paid.

When does SARS issue AA88s to employers now?

Under the employer guide effective 27 October 2026, AA88s for assessed personal income tax debt are generated on the 28th, 29th and 30th of each month (26 to 28 February). Administrative penalty AA88s are generated only in January, March, May, July, September and November. SARS recommends synchronising e@syFile from the 1st of the following month.

Can I refuse to deduct an AA88 from an employee's salary?

Not if the person is your employee and has the salary to cover it. You can submit an outcome if the person no longer works for you, has died, has an insolvent estate, or if the deduction is unaffordable. If you take no action within 30 days of the issue date, SARS marks the appointment as Defaulted and you may become personally liable for the amount.

The employee says they owe SARS less than the AA88 amount. What do I do?

Deduct what the notice says. SARS states that the amount on an AA88 does not necessarily represent the taxpayer's current balance. The employee should take it up with SARS, which can amend or cancel the appointment. You stop or change the deduction only when SARS tells you to.

Do I pay AA88 deductions with my EMP201?

No. Each AA88 has its own payment reference number: the employee's tax reference number, followed by "AI" and an eight-digit number. Pay through eFiling, internet banking or e@syFile using that PRN. A wrong or outdated PRN means SARS allocates the payment on a first-in, first-out basis, which may not clear the right appointment.

What if the employee has left before I received the AA88?

Submit the "Not employed" outcome on e@syFile Employer. If you already paid money over for someone who had left or died, send SARS a written request for rectification. Any overpayment is refunded to the taxpayer.

SARS AA88 Appointments: New Schedule for Employers

When an employee owes SARS money, SARS can instruct their employer to take it from their salary. On 27 October 2026 SARS changed when those instructions, called AA88s, arrive. Whoever runs payroll now has a monthly job to fit in before the run closes, and the employer can be held liable for anything missed.

Key takeaways

On 27 October 2026 SARS announced a revised schedule for automatic AA88 third-party appointments to employers and published Revision 5 of its e@syFile AA88 employer guide, effective the same day.
AA88s for employees' assessed personal income tax debt are now generated on the 28th, 29th and 30th of each month (26 to 28 February), and SARS recommends employers synchronise e@syFile from the 1st of the following month.
AA88s for overdue administrative penalties are generated only every second month: January, March, May, July, September and November. The next penalty batch is due at the end of November 2026, just ahead of the December payroll.
If an employer neither pays nor submits an outcome within 30 days of the AA88 issue date, SARS marks the appointment Defaulted, and the employer may be held personally liable for the amount.
The amount on an AA88 is what SARS wants deducted, not the employee's full debt. Deduct exactly what the notice says, pay it with the AA88's own payment reference number, and stop only when SARS cancels or withdraws it.

What an AA88 is, and why it is landing on your desk

The Tax Administration Act lets SARS appoint a third party who holds or owes money to a taxpayer to pay that money over to settle the taxpayer's tax debt. SARS's own FAQ places this under section 179(1) of the Tax Administration Act, and names employers specifically: where SARS appoints an employer as agent, "the employer is obliged to deduct the outstanding amount from your salary or wages and pay it over to SARS."

The notice an employer receives is the AA88. Banks, attorneys, insurers and investment managers can be appointed the same way, but for most small businesses the employer route is the one that matters, because salary is the most predictable money a person has.

SARS can only issue one if certain conditions are met. According to the SARS employer guide, there must be an overdue balance, no dispute in progress, a final demand that the taxpayer did not comply with, and a valid third party SARS can identify. By the time an AA88 reaches you, SARS has already written to your employee and not been paid.

Expect more of them. BusinessTech, reporting on SARS's 2025/26 Annual Report, put SARS's receivables at R705 billion, of which R658.4 billion was overdue debt. SARS has every reason to collect, and payroll is the most automated way for it to do so.

What changed on 27 October

SARS's announcement is short. The AA88 process now runs on "a revised schedule for employers when automatically processing AA88 appointments for Personal Income Tax (PIT) administrative penalties and assessed tax debt." SARS says the change gives "employers more time to load AA88 deductions before payroll closure" and reduces "repeated AA88 appointments and cancellations."

The detail is in the updated employer guide (Revision 5, effective 27 October 2026). It splits AA88s into two streams:

Outstanding assessed personal income tax: monthly. Generated on the 28th, 29th and 30th of the month (26 to 28 February). Sync from the 1st of the following month.
Overdue administrative penalties: every second month — January, March, May, July, September and November. Generated on the 28th, 29th and 30th of that month. Sync from the 1st of the following month.

In practice, new appointments are created at the very end of a month and are meant to be picked up at the start of the next one. A business that runs payroll on the 25th has most of a month to load them. A business that pays on the 1st or 2nd has very little.

The guide also says notices must be processed "according to the month in which the employer synchronises." Its example: if you sync in March 2026, you process the notices issued in March 2026 with a start date of 31 March 2026.

One point to watch. SARS's general AA88 guidelines page, updated on 28 October, still says "the newest AA88s are issued by the seventh of each month." The new guide's end-of-month dates are the more recent and specific instruction, and cancellations can still arrive any time during the month. Check e@syFile at the start of the month and again before you close payroll.

The dates that matter for the rest of 2026

On the revised schedule, two runs fall before year-end:

End of October. Assessed-tax AA88s are generated on 28 to 30 October. October is not a penalty month, so this batch covers assessed tax debt only. SARS recommends syncing from 1 November, ahead of November payroll.
End of November. Both streams run: assessed-tax AA88s and the two-monthly administrative penalty batch, generated 28 to 30 November. You sync from 1 December, and that's the problem. Many businesses close December payroll early for the holidays, and some pay before the 15th. If your December run closes in the first week, the November batch needs to be loaded almost immediately.

If December is an early-close month for you, put a reminder in for 1 December to sync e@syFile and review the AA88 list before anything else on the payroll checklist.

What you must do when an AA88 arrives

The guide lists three obligations: review the list of affected employees, deduct the stipulated amount from their salary or wages, and pay it to SARS by the due date. In steps:

Synchronise [e@syFile Employer](/features/easyfile) with eFiling. SARS states that "the Third-Party Appointments menu will be locked until you successfully synchronised and retrieved AA88 data." You'll need the current version of e@syFile, an eFiling login linked to your PAYE number, and AA88 registration on eFiling.
Review every name. For each employee you either confirm employment and deduct, or submit an outcome explaining why you can't. The outcomes are: Employment confirmed, Not employed, Request Affordability, Taxpayer Estate – Deceased, and Taxpayer Estate – Insolvent. SARS warns that outcomes cannot be reversed electronically once submitted, so check before you click.
Load the deduction into payroll. Deduct exactly the amount on the notice for the instalment period, between the start date and end date shown. The guide notes that the amount "does not necessarily represent the taxpayer's current outstanding debt balance." It's what SARS has asked you to collect, and you shouldn't adjust it because the employee says the debt is smaller.
Pay it with the right reference. AA88 payments go through eFiling, internet banking or e@syFile. Each AA88 has its own payment reference number, made up of the employee's tax reference number, "AI" and an eight-digit number. SARS allocates payments on that PRN; where an outdated PRN is used, payments are allocated first-in, first-out. Don't fold the money into your EMP201 payment.
Keep deducting until SARS stops you. Only SARS can cancel an appointment. Deductions stop when SARS issues a withdrawal or cancellation confirming the debt is paid or the employee has made a payment arrangement.
Read the monthly reconciliation. SARS sends an AA88 Reconciliation Information to employers during the second week of each month. Compare it with what you deducted and paid.

If you deducted and paid over money for someone who had already left, or who has died, the guide says the employer must send SARS a written request for rectification. Over-collections are refunded to the taxpayer, not the employer.

What happens if you ignore it

This is where an AA88 stops being the employee's problem.

The guide says that if an employer takes no action, meaning neither an outcome nor a payment, within 30 days of the AA88 issue date, SARS changes the status to Defaulted. Employers then have 20 business days to resolve it. The guide is explicit: a default "means that an employer failed to make payments in accordance with the notice. This non-compliance may result in the employer being personally liable for the defaulted amount."

SARS's guidelines page goes further: a third party that fails to act "can also be found guilty of an offence. If convicted, the person is subject to a fine or to imprisonment for not longer than two years."

So an employee's R12,000 tax debt can become the business's R12,000 liability because nobody opened e@syFile. The same applies if you deduct the money and don't pay it over: the Act makes a person who "parts with the money contrary to the notice" personally liable.

Handling it with your employees

An AA88 is a confidential tax matter between SARS and your employee, and your role is to act as the collecting agent. A few practical points:

Tell the employee before the payslip does. A sudden deduction with no warning causes distress and questions you can't answer. Let them know an AA88 has arrived, the amount, and that queries about the debt go to SARS, not to you.
If the deduction is unaffordable, use the proper route. "Request Affordability" exists for this. The employee can also ask SARS directly for a payment arrangement; if SARS agrees, it issues a cancellation or amended notice.
Don't negotiate the amount yourself. You have no authority to deduct less than the notice says, even if the employee shows you a statement with a lower balance.
Keep the paper trail. Save the notice, the outcome you submitted, the proof of payment and the reconciliation. If SARS ever claims a default, that file is your defence.

Why we build it this way

AA88s are a reminder that payroll is no longer a once-a-month calculation. SARS now pushes instructions into it on its own timetable, and the employer carries the risk if they're missed.

That's why Bluubin's payroll is built around the SARS cycle rather than around the payslip. Bulk payroll lets you add a deduction across the affected employees in one pass instead of editing records one by one. Our e@syFile integration keeps your EMP201, EMP501 and IRP5 reconciliation tied to what payroll actually paid, so a separate AA88 line doesn't throw the year-end numbers out. And the employee self-service portal means staff can see their own payslips and the deductions on them, which cuts down the "what is this?" conversations when a SARS deduction first appears.

There is a thirty-day trial with full access and no credit card if you want to run it against your own numbers.

If you take two things from this article, make them these. Sync e@syFile from the 1st of every month and clear the AA88 list before payroll closes, with special attention to 1 December, when the November penalty batch meets an early December run. And never let an AA88 sit: confirm and pay it, or submit an outcome, within 30 days, because after that the debt can become your business's.

This guide is general information to help you get oriented — it isn't formal tax or legal advice. Thresholds, rates and deadlines change, so confirm the current figures on the SARS website or with your accountant before you act.

SARS Has Appointed Your Payroll as Its Debt Collector. On 27 October It Changed the Timetable