Tax insights

Another tax year has come to an end and the 2017 tax filing season for all individuals opened on 1 July 2017. This is the time when each individual who has received income during the period of 1 March 2016 to 28 February 2017 will need to submit their Income Tax Returns to SARS, either via eFiling or by means of going in to a SARS branch.

Notification from SARS for re-submission of 2017 employer annual reconciliation declaration (EMP501) and associated IRP5 /IT3(A) certificates

Section 24I requires that a gain or loss on a foreign exchange transaction be included in or deducted from the income of a taxpayer carrying on a trade within the Republic. In essence, section 24I taxes all gains and losses, whether it is realised or not relating to any foreign exchange transactions.

This article is intended to assist individual taxpayers in understanding their status as a provisional taxpayer. To fully comprehend who qualifies as a provisional taxpayer, we will look at the definition of a provisional taxpayer. A provisional taxpayer is:

In the Tax Administration Act, South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) sets out the requirements for the public officer of a company. A public officer is an individual who is residing in South Africa and must be a registered taxpayer with SARS. The individual representative who is approved by SARS must be a senior official of the company.

SARS has the power to remove money out of your bank account. What are your rights as the taxpayer? The Tax Administration Act No. 28 of 2011 (TAA) came into effect on 1 October 2012, the main objective of which was to align the tax administration provisions of most of our tax Acts and consolidate these into one piece of legislation.

In July of 2016 South African Revenue Services issued a draft notice in terms of Section 29 of the Tax Administration Act. The draft notice sets out additional record keeping requirements for transfer pricing transactions.

As indicated in a previous article published on 17 June 2016, it was uncertain whether or not a non-executive director needs to register for VAT? SARS has now issued Binding Private Ruling 40 and Binding Private Ruling 41 that deals specifically with this question.

With the almost non-existent growth in the economy in the last few years, it has become a common practice for taxpayers with foreign shareholding to receive financial assistance from their holding companies. This assistance is generally in the form of loans, with favourable repayment and interest terms.

In this day and age, with tax legislation becoming more complex and the process of applying the law ever more onerous, professional tax advice is valuable.