The end of Tax Clearance Certificates? New Tax Compliance Certificate process implemented by SARS
On 18 April 2016 the South African Revenue Service rolled out phase 3 of its enhanced tax clearance certificate process. In the past, all avenues to obtaining a Tax Clearance Certificate for tenders or in general led to having to go to a SARS branch to obtain a print of the clearance certificate. With the new procedure, the entities’ tax status can be verified online by the Third Party.
This is a definite improvement over the previous system and should ease the burden of obtaining tax clearance certificates on entities. The new system also introduces a handy dashboard that supplies an overview of all items that currently indicate the entity as non-compliant with SARS. Another handly functionality to the taxpayer is the ability to see who has viewed their status online and allowing the taxpayers to allocate payments themselves and challenge the status given by SARS.
The main process by which tax clearance certificates will now be verified is by supplying an institution with a PIN in order to verify the taxpayer’s status online but it appears the third party will need to have access to SARS Efiling to verify the tax compliance status of the entity. Entities without an EFiling profile will presumable have to gain access to EFiling before they can verify the status of a third party. The online verification gives the verifier the ability to enter Tender amounts and duration for tenders awarded though it is unclear how this information will be used. An online document can be printed by the third party to denote the status at the time of verifying.
SARS has issued a comprehensive guide to the new system that can be found here.
At CFO360 we can assist you with obtaining a SARS Tax Clearance Certificate with the least amount of hassle.
