What a wild ride the last few weeks have been.

Tax issues

Draft Tax Amendments
With all the shenanigans that surrounded the Budget Speech this year, National Treasury has confirmed that the draft Tax Amendments will only be released in August. They had been hoping for July (and may still squeak them in), but early August is more likely.

In addition, National Treasury has announced a number of changes to be made to the budget process, something which was long overdue. From the press release:

Some of the initiatives that will be utilised for the identification of programmes to be included in the TARS process are: 

Spending reviews

• Previous work should be updated, where appropriate, to inform implementation;
• Outcomes of new sectoral reviews, such as the Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP), and
• The review of infrastructure conditional grants should be implemented.

New data driven approaches

• Use of technology to eliminate double dipping in social grants and other programmes (e.g. community works programme);
• Annual audit of ghost workers and payroll irregularities;
• Updated proposals on public entity and departmental rationalisation;
• Implement personnel expenditure review completed by the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), and
• Finalise extended review of public entities remuneration.

More detail here: https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/government-publishes-changes-budget-process.

Filing season update
This should now be well under way for most of us. A quick reminder that certain provisional taxpayers were selected for auto assessment. They should have received notification of this fact. Please keep an eye out!

In addition, the following changes were made to the eFiling returns/process:

Allowable Interest Expenses on Foreign Interest in Terms of Practice Note 31 – The “Allowable interest expenses incurred in the production of interest received” line item has been introduced within the “Foreign Interest” container of the ITR tax return to align with Practice Note 31.

Backdated (Antedated) Salaries and Pensions – New source code 3623 and 3673 has been introduced to the ITR12 tax return for backdated (antedated) salaries and pensions.

Section 10(1)(i) interest exemption – For section 10(1)(i) (of the ITA) exemption to be applied correctly, the executor will be able to declare the “Interest Earned Date From” and “Interest Earned Date To” within the investment-income container on the deceased estate tax return where such date exceeds the year of assessment during which the taxpayer became deceased.

Exempt Local and Foreign Dividends – Two new source codes have been introduced for local (source code 4306) and foreign (source code 4307) dividends within the non-taxable container on the ITR12 tax return.

Section 9H Change of Residence – From the 2025 tax year, RSA tax-resident and non-resident taxpayers will be presented with a specific ITR12 and IRP6 tax-return type based on taxpayer registration status available with SARS, i.e.:

ITR12

• RSA tax resident will be presented with the resident wizard questionnaire.
• Non-resident will be presented with the non-resident wizard questionnaire.
• Taxpayers who ceased RSA tax residency during the year of assessment will be presented with the resident and non-resident questionnaire.

IRP6

• RSA tax resident will be presented with the resident return.
• Non-resident will be presented with the non-resident return.
• Taxpayers who ceased RSA tax residency during the year of assessment will be presented with resident and non-resident return.

Trust Income Changes – From the 2025 tax year, SARS will apply a 50% communal estate where income from a trust is declared, and the taxpayer is married in community of property.

Unused Balances such as Section 11F, Section 18A, Section 20 – SARS will print the note given below on the ITA34, in instances where unused balances are not automatically carried over to the subsequent year of assessment: SARS did not consider your carryover/brought forward amount(s) as the current return is under the verification review. SARS will initiate the amendment of the return to take the carryover/brought forward amount into account once the verification case is finalised.

Enhancement of Banking Details – To enhance user experience with the Registration, Amendments, and Verification Form (RAV01) form and the ITR12 tax return, taxpayers will be presented with a list of their verified banking details available to SARS. Taxpayers must select this information when updating their bank-account details rather than manually capturing them.

Reinstatement of RSA Tax Residency – The Registration, Amendments, and Verification Form (RAV01) form will enable a taxpayer who ceased to be an RSA tax resident in the past to indicate the reinstated date on the “Reinstatement Date of RSA Tax Residency” line item.

More details here: https://www.sars.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/Taxseason2025/Filing-Season-2025-Everything-you-need-to-know.pdf.