Written by Nicci
Posted 12 August 2025
TaxTim is aware of a tax directive issue between SARS and certain retirement funds where some fund transfers are incorrectly being treated as taxable events. One of the funds affected, Alexander Forbes, has confirmed that it is aware of the error and is working with SARS to resolve it.
The problem arises when retirement funds are transferred from one fund to another. These should not be taxed, but the error ha...
Written by Alicia
Posted 29 July 2025
SARS (the South African Revenue Service) has made recent changes regarding how foreign nationals and some non-resident taxpayers are handled in the tax system. These changes affect both current tax residents without SA ID numbers and individuals who have since left South Africa.
What's Changed?
Previously, SARS assessed taxpayers based on their location while earning income. This allowed many foreign nationals living and worki...
Written by Nicci
Posted 23 July 2025
If you are a non-resident for tax purposes but SARS still has you on record as a South African tax resident, you will face unexpected challenges when filing your tax return this season.
In prior years, SARS allowed taxpayers to file as non-residents even if their RAV01 profile still reflected them as residents. However, SARS has introduced changes this tax season: you will ...
Written by Marc
Updated 13 July 2025
Tax season always throws up some interesting and confusing calculations, but for many, the most confusing of all is how medical aid contributions and Out of Pocket medical expenses are treated.
Read more →
Written by Nicci
Updated 27 June 2025
You may be employed by someone, but for one reason or another- you don't receive an IRP5 and no amount of begging or pleading
Read more →
Written by Nicci
Posted 26 June 2025
SARS has made changes to the 2025 tax return to help taxpayers who ceased South African tax residency during the tax year. If this applies to you, your tax return will now include two parts:
Part 1: While you were still a South African tax resident
Written by Alicia
Posted 3 June 2025
The 2025 filing season opens this year on Monday, 21 July.
This year, the tax season is even shorter than last year (and last year was shorter than the prior year!). This means that SARS are giving you less time to file your tax return.
Important Filing Deadlines
20 October 2025: Salary-only employees, who earn no other signficant income (i.e. non-provisional taxpayers) and ALL auto-assessed ...
Written by Patrick
Updated 3 June 2025
What is an auto-assessment?
This is an automatic assessment issued by SARS to certain taxpayers.
Read more →
Written by Nicci
Posted 23 May 2025
The Section 13sex residential unit deduction is a South African tax break for people who invest in new rental properties. If you build or buy new units to rent out, you can deduct part of the building cost from your taxable income each year. To qualify, you must own at least five new and unused residential units in South Africa that are used for rental.
You can claim 5% of the building cost
Written by Alicia
Posted 19 May 2025
If I run a small business and buy an asset like a vehicle for R200,000 (paid in full and not financed), can I deduct the full amount from my taxable income in the same year? Or do I only deduct the depreciation amount each year?
Also, do vehicles qualify for the 50/30/20% depreciation rule over three years like other small business assets?
Written by Nicci
Posted 14 May 2025
South Africa introduced the Two-Pot Retirement System to help people access part of their retirement savings before retirement age, while keeping the rest for retirement. It's a helpful system – but it comes with tax rules that can surprise some people.
If you withdrew from your Two-Pot in the tax year, you need to include the details of this withdrawal in your annual tax return. The fund should have issued you an IRP5/IT3a tax certificate which reflects the withdrawal amount (source code 3926), related tax as well as the tax directive number issued by SARS...
Written by Alicia
Updated 7 May 2025
The assets and liabilities section in the annual tax return (ITR12) needs to be completed if you:
Each asset should be reported at its original cost — the amount you paid at the time of purchase or investment. According to SARS, these entrie...
Written by Alicia
Updated 22 April 2025
TaxTim uses the financial information which you entered to work out the payment due on your provisional tax return (also called an IRP6). However, there may be some information we don’t have access to, which won’t be included in the estimate of your provisional tax payment. To see what SARS has on record, you will need to request a Provisio...
Written by Alicia
Updated 22 April 2025
During the final days of the provisional tax season, high traffic volumes may cause delays in submitting provisional tax returns to SARS—even after you've clicked 'submit' on our website.
To avoid late payment penalties, we recommend paying the estimated provisional tax amount shown on our website. Once your provisional tax return (IRP6) appears in eFiling and your SARS provisional Statement o...
Written by Elani
Posted 2 April 2025
Unfortunately, some of the SARS documents cannot be viewed online (i.e. from within your internet browser). You can work around this issue by downloading the SARS document to your computer. You will then be able to view the document when opening it directly on your device.
Steps to follow if the SARS document is blank on your browser:
Written by Alicia
Posted 27 March 2025
If you're a provisional taxpayer, you can request a statement of your provisional account on eFiling. However, instead of finding it on your Income Tax workpage, you first need to go to the Provisional Tax workpage. This can be tricky if you don't use eFiling often, so we've listed the steps below to help you.
STEP 1: Log into SARS eFiling
Written by Alicia
Updated 2 December 2024
Insolvency is a state of financial distress when a person or business is unable to pay their debts.
What is Sequestration?Sequestration is a legal process that is used to deal with your financial difficulties and manage your debts. It gives you legal relief from creditors, while the debt recovery efforts of the various companies you owe are put on hold.
Written by Alicia
Posted 22 November 2024
SARS Timelines
SARS operates within specific timelines to comply with the rules outlined in the Tax Administration Act and the commitments detailed in their service charter.
However, these timelines are not easily accessible on the SARS website, leaving many of our users needing to contact the helpdesk for updates on their submissions.
To assist you, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of these timelines:
Auto-Assessment<...
Written by Marc
Updated 4 August 2024
Taxpayers this year are facing a new gripe with SARS when it comes to receiving those well-earned refunds. The current two scenarios are:
In both these cases a refund should be paid out within 72 hours (if the taxpayer is due one), however thousands of taxpayers still have not been paid their refund. Here’s why!...
Written by Evan
Updated 4 August 2024
In 2024, we have noticed that SARS is withholding refunds from taxpayers with outstanding tax returns, sometimes dating back many years. In some cases, SARS is requesting unfiled returns from as far back as 10-15 years ago, going back to when the taxpayer first registered for a tax number.
Block on eFiling submissions older than 5 years
This year, SARS introduced a change to eFiling that has frustrated many taxpayers. Returns older than five years are now blocked from being submitted on individual profiles, prompting a message that these must be filed at a branch.
Don't worry - TaxTim can help...
Written by Nicci
Updated 30 July 2024
After you have submitted your supporting documents to SARS, they have 21 working days to review them, assuming all sufficient documents have been received. Once their review is complete, you will either:
Additional Documents Request
If SARS still requires for documents from you, they will either send ...
Written by Marc
Updated 30 July 2024
Completion Letter
You will receive a Completion Letter if all goes well and SARS is happy with your documents. This means that SARS is not adjusting your Original Assessment and if you have a refund due, it should be paid out in 72 hours (provided you have no tax debt due or outstanding tax returns from prior years). Similarly, if you owe tax to SARS per your Original Assessment, the amount you owe will remain unchanged.
An example of a Compl...
Written by Nicci
Updated 30 July 2024
This is a common area of concern for many taxpayers who don’t know why they are asked to submit documents to SARS after they file their tax return.
Read more →
Written by Nicci
Updated 30 July 2024
After submission of your tax return, when you receive your tax assessment (ITA34) from SARS, you need to scan down to the block “Compliance Information” to see if SARS requires anything further from you. You will see “Selected for audit or verification” with a Y or N (Yes or No) next to it. If you have a N, you can breathe a sigh of relief and consider yourself fortunate that SARS probably doesn’t require anything further from you for this tax year. If you have a Y in the block (and we are seeing this more and more frequently) it means that SARS wants to see evidence or back up which supports the amounts you entered on your tax return....
Written by Evan
Updated 20 July 2024
SARS 2024 tax season dates:
15 July 2024 to 21 October 2024: individual (non-provisional) taxpayers
15 July 2024 to 20 January 2025: provisional taxpayers
If you earn less than R500 000 in a year, and fulfill a series of complicated criteria, you may not have to file a tax return in 2024.
However, we advise you to take GREAT CARE here, and understand your duties properly, because if you don't, you may suffer for it later on.
Here are the top 5 reasons why you should not skip filing your tax return this season:
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