Being paid in pounds or Euros or dollars and getting to spend them in South Africa is the dream. Dealing with SARS, on the other hand, can be a nightmare.
Being paid in pounds or Euros or dollars and getting to spend them in South Africa is the dream.
Except, as with most things that sound too good to be true, there’s always a catch and it comes in the form of the tax man.reports that it’s just become far more difficult for South Africans who live and work abroad to convince SARS that they are non-residents for tax purposes. “We are privy to a large number of SARS verification requests, allowing us to gauge the extent of a SARS audit and SARS’ ability to investigate and verify a taxpayer. We have seen a recent rise in these expatriate audits from SARS, and many different iterations thereof,” [Nikolas Skafidas, a tax diagnostic specialist] says.
There was also a simple yet crucial change to tax returns for the 2022 year, with SARS deactivating the non-resident ‘tick-box’ on tax returns.