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2025 Legal and Policy

Legal and Policy - 10 April 2025

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SARS

  • 3 April 2025 — The South African Revenue Service (SARS), together with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), Border Management Authority (BMA), and Government Printing Works (GPW), took a giant step today to foster stronger and more integrated collaboration by signing cooperative agreement on modernisation and digitisation. A direct agreement was undertaken between SARS and DHA, which created a broad framework of collaboration between the parties.

These agreements are in line with the Digital Transformation of Government Roadmap, which the Cabinet approved on 26 March 2025. This is an important milestone which gives expression to the whole-of-government approach to deal with new and evolving challenges in digital identification and consequent fraud detection.

The first agreement was signed between the SARS Commissioner and the Director-General of DHA. This agreement revives the previous Direct Master Agreement, which has been the bedrock of the long-standing relationship between the parties, which began in 2010. SARS has played an important role to assist DHA to develop its own sophisticated IT systems. Today’s agreement will deepen collaboration on digital platforms to improve services and enhance data. The second agreement was a multi-party memorandum of understanding between the DHA, SARS, BMA, and GPW. This represents a step forward to create the governance framework to enable, strengthen, and oversee the evolving strategic partnership between the signatories. SARS and the BMA have already been working toward greater alignment and closer collaboration. This important agreement helps to integrate SARS and BMA strategically and operationally.

Commissioner Kieswetter said that:

“The agreements concluded today prove the success of a whole-of-government approach to tackle modern and sophisticated challenges that government faces. The opportunity to have a common platform dealing with a unique digital identity for individuals and entities will help government to ensure that there is only one identity through which the individual interacts with government. This unified platform will surely prevent double-dipping, such as when an individual receives a grant while they are in government employ. It will also build smart modern organisation that makes the movement of people seamlessly”

Livhuwani Makhode, DHA Director-General, expressed his delight at the revival of the agreement between DHA and SARS. He said:

“This exceptional and reliable relationship with SARS, which has been existence since 2010, represents a right step in dealing with myriad challenges faced by Home Affairs. Creating a smart digital platform to achieve free movement of people while ensuring that undesirable individuals are detected will be a giant leap forward. Extensive use of digitisation, including the use of biometrics, is the way the department will operate. This collaboration will accelerate initiatives such as electronic travel-permits, digitisation of the naturalisation process, and implementing more efficient permanent-residency protocols”.

The BMA Commissioner Dr Masiapato commended the excellent collaboration between SARS and BMA. He said that:

“The multiparty agreement signed today will enhance the relationship that has already been in place with SARS. He underscored the importance of the use of digitisation process in ports of entry and border law enforcement areas. The existing vibrant relationship will benefit immensely from this agreement and create real value for travellers in and out of the country while enhancing the capability to stop the movement of illegal migrants”.

The CEO of Government Printing Works Ms Alinah Fosi said that it was an honour for her on behalf of GPW to form part of this multi-party agreement. She said that:

“GPW is part of the digital ecosystem, and this agreement will therefore assist the organisation with delivery on its mandate, and strategic role, and vision as a Certification Authority and Digital Trust Centre. GPW will serve the role of verification and certification of digital ID’s using e-government platforms to enable RSA citizens to access their service at a touch of a button using mobile technology as well. This is critical as the security of government documents will be ensured and trusted. Unquestionably the digitisation of documents not only enhance their security, but it will also assure their quality and authenticity thereby enabling travellers a safe and hassle-free travel especially when traveling in the continent and abroad”.

  • 3 April 2025 – Traders eligible to apply for Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) status must be registered or licensed for a Customs activity which include importers, exporters, certified customs brokers, bonded area operators, bonded transportation companies, forwarders and shipping companies amongst others. Part of the process is to do the assessment, follow these easy steps:

Step 1: Register, nominate, book the assessment following the process SC-CF-37 – Sufficient Knowledge Competency Assessment for AEO – External Guide

Step 2: Assessment Preparation – The External Policies only, found in the Related Documents section hereunder, serve as study material.

Step 3: Watch the video on our SARS TV channel: AEO Customs Sufficient Knowledge

Step 4: Complete the assessment.

For more information, see the AEO webpage.

  • 7 April 2025 – 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.

For more information, see the Travel e-log book webpage.

  • 7 April 2025 – As announced in the Budget Speech by the Minister of Finance, the following Transfer Duty rates are applicable to properties acquired on or after 1 April 2025 and apply to all persons, including natural and non-natural persons (including Companies, Close Corporations (CC) and Trusts):

Value of Property (Rand)

Rate

0 – 1 210 000

0%

1 210 001 – 1 663 800

3% of the value above R1 210 000, but does not exceed R1 663 800

1 663 801 – 2 329 300

R13 614 plus 6% of the value above R 1 663 800 but does not exceed R2 329 300

2 329 301 – 2 994 800

R53 544 plus 8% of the value above R 2 329 300 but does not exceed R 2 994 800

2 994 801 – 13 310 000

R106 784 plus 11% of the value above R 2 994 800 but does not exceed R 13 310 000

13 310 001 and above

R1 241 456 plus 13% of the value exceeding R13 310 000

For more information, see the Transfer Duty webpage and the updated guide.

  • 8 April 2025 – Dear Stakeholder, kindly note that our SARSQA Connect Direct Public Certificate has changed. For those who have not updated it yet, please urgently contact the 3rd Party Data Support (bus_sys_cdsupport@sars.gov.za) to get the latest SARSQA Connect Direct Public Certificate to update it on your side.
  • 8 April 2025 – In the April 2025 issue we look at the Annual Employer Declarations (EMP501) period that runs from 1 April to 31 May 2025.
  • 8 April 2025 – As SARS, we continuously optimise our systems to provide clarity and certainty to taxpayers and traders and make it easy for them to fulfil their tax obligations. These enhancements help to make our digital platforms safer and more secure.

Therefore, as per our previous communication, we plan to implement the enhancements to our Tax Directives system on Friday, 11 April 2025 in line with the IBIR-006 Tax Directives Interface Specification Version 6.803. The current scope of the enhancements is outlined below.

  • Tax-neutral transfers were covered in the previous release. However, some allowable transfers pertaining to unclaimed benefit funds (48) and inactive members with insufficient information (54) were not updated. In this release, we cater for these allowable transfers. As with all transfers made on or after 1 September 2024, these transfers must also include the values in the Vested, Retirement and Savings components, even if the relevant component value is zero. The Recognition of Transfer (ROT) must also be submitted and include the three components.
  • A new tax directive reason has been added on the IRP3(a), backdated (antedated) salaries and/or pensions with source code 3623 for reporting.
  • Before 1 September 2024, the definition of Retirement Annuity Fund provided that if a member of a retirement annuity fund discontinues their contributions to that retirement annuity fund and their interest in that fund is less than R15 000, the member may access their full interest in that retirement fund before retirement as a retirement fund lump sum withdrawal benefit taxed in accordance with the tax rates applicable to a retirement fund lump sum withdrawal benefit. From 1 September 2024, a member of a Retirement Annuity Fund who discontinues their contributions to that Retirement Annuity Fund may access the full value in the Vested and Retirement components in that fund before retirement, as a retirement fund lump sum withdrawal benefit taxed in accordance with the tax rates applicable to a retirement fund lump sum withdrawal benefit, if the sum of these components are R15 000 or less. It must be noted that this R15 000 limitation remains applicable at fund level and not at policy level.
  • On 1 March 2022, Emigration Withdrawal was replaced by Cessation of South African Residence. The provisions in the definitions of the various retirement fund types that allowed members to access their full interest in their preservation funds or retirement annuity funds on termination of membership as a result of emigration during a transitional period were deleted with effect from 1 September 2024. The system will no longer accept any tax directive applications submitted on or after 1 September 2024 for the reason “Emigration Withdrawal”.
  • The RST01 — Directive Application by Non-Resident for Relief of SA Tax for Pension and Annuities and the IRP3(a) — Application for tax Directives: Gratuities and Savings Component Withdrawals can be accessed on eFiling and submitted with supporting documents for processing. The manual submission channel for these application forms will be replaced by eFiling with effect from 11 April 2025.
  • RST02 — Request by Non-Resident for a Refund of South African Tax for Pension and Annuities in terms of a Double Taxation Agreement will be discontinued. On submission of a tax return during assessment a possible refund might become payable.
  • The transfer provisions under paragraphs 2(1)(c) and 6A of the Second Schedule will be extended to include Retirement Annuity Funds. This means that a member of a Retirement Annuity Fund, who has attained normal retirement age, as per the rules of that fund but has not elected to retire, can transfer their retirement interest to another Retirement Annuity Fund on a tax neutral basis using paragraph 2(1)(c) as the transfer reason with effect from 1 March 2025.

Please do not submit tax directives files on the current form after 16:00 on 11 April 2025. We will queue and process such files after we have upgraded the Tax Directives system. SARS values your support and collaboration.

  • SARSTC VAT 22558 (VAT) [2025] ZATC CPT (11 February 2025)
  • SARSTC IT 25209 (ADM) [2025] ZATC JHB (3 February 2025)
  • SARSTC 2023-22 (ADM) [2024] ZATC JHB (27 December 2024)
  • SARSTC IT 45776 (IT) [2024] ZATC JHB (29 November 2024)

Summaries are available on the Tax Court Judgments page

  • 9 April 2025 – Customs and Excise Act, 1964

Interpretation: Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964 – twelve imported consignments of cigarette tobacco entered under rebate code 460.24 not entered into SAD 500 ZRW forms as required by rule 19A.09(c) – whether the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service has a discretion to exempt non-compliance with the provisions of rule 19A.09(c) in terms of s 75(10)(a) of the Customs and Excise Act.

NATIONAL TREASURY

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Author2025 Legal and Policy
DivisionLegal and Policy
Keywords
Legal and Policy
10 April 2025
Categories
Legal and Policy