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2024 Legal and Policy

Legal and Policy - 1 August 2024

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SARS

  • 25 July 2024- SARS has noted the challenges with respect to refund reversal on some of the accounts of taxpayers. Since the beginning of the Filing Season, SARS has paid out in excess of R14 Billion to 1.5 million taxpayers. The information at SARS’ disposal indicate that 30 thousand taxpayers have witnessed reversal of their refunds.

Due to the risk associated with validity of refunds payments, all refunds go through the validation process with all stakeholders in the tax ecosystem. These validations could result in refunds being flagged for verification.

SARS has worked through these reversed refunds, and we are happy to report back that 90% of all refunds have been released. By Monday morning, any remaining refunds will either be released, or taxpayers will be engaged to provide supporting documents where necessary. These are the normal processes in the validations of refunds. Notwithstanding the above challenges, SARS has in line with its earlier commitment paid out 83% of all refunds within 72 hours.

SARS sincerely apologises to all taxpayers for the inconvenience caused in this validation process.

For further information, please SARS at SARSMedia@sars.gov.za.

  • 26 July 2024 – Customs and Excise Act, 1964, and Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, 2000

Administrative Law – review of Commissioner’s decision refusing refund of excise duty and fuel levy – Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964 (the Act) – notice of legal proceedings under s 96 – whether response to notice a ‘decision’ within the meaning of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act 3 of 2000 – s 75(1)(d) of the Act – whether licensed distributor of fuel satisfied requirements for refund – meaning of s 64F of the Act – that fuel be obtained from stocks of licensee of customs and excise manufacturing warehouse.

  • 29 July 2024 – SARS has recently received complaints from tax practitioners regarding difficulties in accessing their clients’ returns older than five years. To address this issue, tax practitioners are required to reconfirm their status on eFiling before attempting to request or submit such returns. Once their status has been successfully reconfirmed, tax practitioners may proceed with these requests or submissions.

Additionally, it has been noted that tax administrators linked to tax practitioners are currently unable to request or submit old returns, placing an undue burden on the tax practitioners. In response, SARS has implemented a change allowing tax administrators linked to tax practitioners to request or submit returns older than five years.

  • 29 July 2024 – Tax Administration Act, 2011
  • Interpretation Note 132 – Persons not eligible to register as a tax practitioner and deregistration of registered tax practitioners for tax non-compliance
  • 30 July 2024 – Income Tax Act, 1962
  • 30 July 2024 – Income Tax Act, 1962
  • 30 July 2024 – Income Tax Act, 1962
  • Binding General Ruling 73 – Meaning of taxable income for purposes of setting-off the balance of an assessed loss by a company
  • 30 July 2024 – SARS is enhancing its digital platforms to help traders and taxpayers meet their tax and customs obligations with ease. As part of this modernisation, SARS is automating the management of customs and excise bonds. This includes the introduction of the Guarantee Management Service (GMS) system, which will serve as a comprehensive platform for managing these bonds through eFiling to provide traders and taxpayers with bond-information records. From 26 July 2024, the GMS system will process cases automatically by:
  • Notifying traders and taxpayers of SARS requests, surety receipt and cancellation.
  • Providing taxpayers and traders, upon request, with a list of guarantees/bonds held by SARS. (These will be displayed when a trader selects the “Manage Bonds and Guarantees” menu under the eAccount menu on eFiling.)

For this phase of the implementation, only clients with access to an eAccount on eFiling can view their list of bonds held with SARS. See the steps here.

  • 30 July 2024 – The state provides state warehouses for the safekeeping of goods. These are managed by Customs. The purpose of this list of unentered goods is to notify the importer, exporter and any other person that has interest in the goods that the goods have been taken up into the State warehouse and if they remain unentered they will be disposed in accordance with the provisions of the Customs & Excise Act.

See the latest Customs Weekly List of Unentered Goods here.

  • 30 July 2024 – Tax Administration Act, 2011: Public Notice 5077 of Government Gazette 50986 dated 26 July 2024, published in terms of section 95(6) of the Tax Administration Act, 2011, extending the date by which a taxpayer, eligible for automatic assessment, must submit an income tax return.
  • 30 July 2024 – Income Tax Act, 1962
  • Draft Guide – Allowances and deductions relating to assets used in the generation of electricity from specified sources of renewable energy

Due date for comment: 30 August 2024

  • 30 July 2024 – The Guide to Complaints functionality on eFiling has been updated to align with the latest list of Recognised Controlling Bodies (RCB’s).

Updated guide:

  • 31 July 2024 – Income Tax Act, 1962
  • 31 July 2024 – The Cape Town branch is closed for the remainder of the day. All virtual appointments will still be honoured. Physical appointments will be rescheduled as far as possible. Our apologies for the inconvenience.
  • 31 July 2024 – South Africa recorded a preliminary trade balance surplus of R24.2 billion in June 2024. This surplus was attributable to exports of R172.0 billion and imports of R147.7 billion, inclusive of trade with Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia (BELN).

See the full Media Release here.

Visit the Trade Statistics webpage.

  • 31 July 2024 – The Excise Environmental Levy on Electricity Generation policy has been updated:
  • To align the policy with Note 2(a) of Schedule 1 Part 3B; and
  • To reference the requirements of Note 6 of Schedule 1 Part 3B in the policies.

Furthermore, the Environmental Levy on Electricity Generation External Guide has been converted from a manual.

Updated documents:

NATIONAL TREASURY

SAFLII

ATAF

AuthorLegal and Policy
DivisionTax
Keywords
Legal and Policy
1 August 2024
Categories
Legal and Policy
Date1 August 2024