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Transcript

Tax season 2025 · Tax Break: South African tax for professionals

• 0:11
  Welcome and thank you for joining me for tax break.
• 0:14
  This is a podcast about South African tax for South African
• 0:18
  tax professionals and practitioners.
• 0:20
  My name is Peter Finished. I'm Anthony.
• 0:22
  Each episode I share my thoughts with you on a topic galleries
• 0:25
  and development in South African tax and I tried to keep the
• 0:29
  episode short enough that you can listen to them whenever
• 0:32
  you've got a few minutes to spare with it.
• 0:34
  Is that you walking the dog around the block or driving to
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  work whenever you've got a bit of time to quickly catch up on
• 0:42
  your tax knowledge, right? Our topic for today comes from a
• 0:49
  public notice that was issued by Sash recently.
• 0:52
  And it also relates to a question that often comes up
• 0:57
  often get the question from foreign entities or persons.
• 1:01
  Should I submit a tax return in South Africa or not?
• 1:05
  Now, the answer to this question lies in Section 66 of the Income
• 1:10
  Tax Act. So Section 66, one reads that
• 1:14
  the Commissioner must annually give public notice of the
• 1:18
  persons who are required by the Commissioner to furnish returns
• 1:22
  for their assessment of normal tax within the period prescribed
• 1:26
  in that notice. So this noticed that the
• 1:29
  commissioner issues actually it's it's a very important
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  document as far as the tax season at least is concerned to
• 1:36
  know for specific tax year whom I submit returns and when.
• 1:42
  So the notice for the 2025 year of assessment was published on
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  the 23rd of May 2025. It's public notice number 719
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  and I think content wise it looks fairly similar to the 2024
• 1:58
  one, which again also looked fairly similar to the one before
• 2:02
  it. Every now and then there are
• 2:03
  slight changes to it, but nothing major I could pick up in
• 2:09
  the 2025 one that's that's significantly different from
• 2:13
  from the others or from the 2024 one.
• 2:16
  Now just a quick recap of what this notice looks like.
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  So it in paragraph 2 it lists the different types of persons
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  and based on their residence status that need to submit
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  income tax returns in South Africa.
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  And so you often find the distinction between resident and
• 2:38
  non resident and then for the different types of persons,
• 2:41
  natural persons, trusts or or you radical persons, right then
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  paragraph three of the notice tells us who is not required to
• 2:52
  submit returns. So if you, for example, wonder
• 2:58
  about something like an auto assessment and you'll find there
• 3:03
  the answer in that paragraph as to when, when you don't need to
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  submit a return if you've been auto assist or at least it gives
• 3:13
  a mechanism for for these auto assessments.
• 3:17
  Then paragraph 4, this is a paragraph that does look
• 3:20
  different every year. So it contains the key dates for
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  the 2025 tax season. Firstly, for companies, Bo and
• 3:29
  recreational clubs, the, the, the, the date always sort of
• 3:33
  remains the same. You need, they need to submit
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  tax returns within 12 months from the from the year ends for
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  any other person. So that leaves us to a large
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  extent with individuals and trusts.
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  The key date is 20 October 2025, except for trusts and
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  provisional taxpayers, the date is the 19th of January 2026 when
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  they need to submit the tax returns.
• 4:01
  A new related note, but but something different.
• 4:06
  I often also get the question from from taxpayers whether they
• 4:10
  need to submit it three returns. So in other words, these third
• 4:15
  party returns, and what a lot of taxpayers don't seem to know is
• 4:19
  that this is similar notice. It's not published on an annual
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  basis, but there's another notice published by the
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  commissioner that lists who need to submit third party returns.
• 4:30
  So maybe just to mention, if you are unsure whether you need to
• 4:33
  submit a third party return, that's the place where you will
• 4:37
  find the answer, right? So in summary, it was a nice
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  quick short episode. Um, the tax season information
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  is contained in a notice that was published by the
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  Commissioner on the 23rd of May 2025.
• 4:53
  These detailed requirements in these notices to who need to
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  submit tax returns and do not. And the notice also contains the
• 5:02
  key dates for the 2025 tax season.
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  That's it for today's episode. If you've got questions,
• 5:09
  comments, ideas for future episodes, please send me an
• 5:13
  e-mail. My e-mail address is in the show
• 5:15
  notes. If you like the podcast, please
• 5:18
  go and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and
• 5:21
  tell all your friends and colleagues about the podcast.
• 5:24
  As always, nothing in the podcast is intended to be tax
• 5:28
  advice or a replacement for fact specific tax advice.
• 5:32
  Until next time, goodbye.