The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is no longer merely modernising; it is actively tightening the net around trusts to ensure greater transparency, accuracy, and compliance. For trustees, tax practitioners, and other representatives, the 2025 season introduces more stringent obligations that cannot be overlooked.
South Africans made up 10% of the 40,000 people granted New Zealand citizenship in 2024, making them the third largest group of overseas-born nationals to become citizens. The latest census confirms that more than 95,000 South Africans now call New Zealand home, up from 71,382 in 2018.
As South Africa makes its way through another challenging tax year, a subtle but serious financial pressure is beginning to affect more employees across the income spectrum. For the third consecutive year, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) did not adjust the individual income tax tables in line with inflation, a decision with far-reaching implications for both employers and employees.
For years, South Africa’s voluntary disclosure programme (VDP) has allowed taxpayers to correct past defaults on Income Tax, Value-Added Tax (VAT), Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE), and other mainstream taxes under the Tax Administration Act, No. 28 of 2011 (TAA). Often some of the riskiest and most heavily penalised areas of non-compliance, being Customs and Excise, were left outside the framework. That gap is finally closing.
As the 2025 filing season unfolds, taxpayers should be reminded that when the South African Revenue Service (SARS) issues an estimated assessment, often because a taxpayer has not filed a return or failed to provide information on time, the debt is immediately due and payable.
South Africans who have worked abroad and accumulated foreign retirement funds, or foreign nationals who become South African tax residents, need to urgently be aware that the South African Revenue Service (SARS) now wants taxing rights on their foreign retirement funds. This proposed amendment is set to come into effect on 1 March 2026.
With the 2025 annual tax filing season underway, many South Africans who have incurred significant out-of-pocket medical expenses during the year of assessment, continue to enquire about how they can possibly claim an additional medical tax credit to lower their tax liability.
In the complex world of payroll, many employers have historically taken a head-in-the-sand approach, particularly when it comes to the taxation of employee benefits. If you are not 100% confident that every fringe benefit in your payroll is correctly taxed, now is the time to act, as the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is clamping down on all forms of tax non-compliance.
On 28 July 2025 the South African Revenue Service (SARS) issued another notice specifically aimed at South Africans abroad concerning their tax residency status. It deals with how an individual who is a non-resident taxpayer on the SARS system, should complete their tax return this filing season.
The fact that millions of South African taxpayers withdrew R43 billion from their accessible retirement savings under the Two-Pot System in the previous tax year, and many are already dipping in again this year, clearly shows that employees need real-time financial relief.