Frequently asked questions regarding your 2025 annual tax submission

The tax-filing season dates are shown below and are also available on the SARS website, www.sars.gov.za. 

*Please note that if you cannot file electronically, you will need to make an appointment to complete your tax return at a SARS branch.

SARS will continue to auto-assess certain individual taxpayers based on information received from employers, financial institutions, medical schemes, retirement annuity fund administrators and other third-party data providers.

Refer to the SARS website for further information on the 2025 auto-assessment process.

SARS requires all individuals, including minors, who earned taxable income for the 2024/2025 tax year above the following thresholds to register for income tax:

• Below age 65:                      R95 750
• Age 65 to below 75:            R148 217
• Age 75 and over:                  R165 689

You can register for an income tax number by completing the eFiling registration process. To view the requirements to register for a tax number, please visit the ‘How do I register for tax’ section of the SARS website.

SARS charges non-compliance penalties for each month that your return is outstanding. SARS may collect these penalties from appointed third parties, such as your employer or investment manager. It is therefore important to check your tax status with SARS, as SARS may deduct penalties from your salary or bank account if you do not submit your returns or pay your penalties on time.

To verify the information that taxpayers provide to SARS and to pre-populate certain sections on taxpayers’ income tax returns, SARS requires third parties (including Allan Gray) to report certain information. We report the following client information to SARS twice a year:

• Investment income (e.g. dividends and interest)
• Capital gains/losses
• Living annuity income
• Contributions to retirement annuity funds
• Transfers out of retirement funds
• Contributions, withdrawals, other income, transfers and returns earned on tax-free investment accounts
• Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax deducted on retirement fund and living annuity lump sum payments (as well as instances where no PAYE was deducted)
• Information required under FATCA/CRS (once a year, see "What is FATCA/CRS and who does it affect?" below)

You are able to access your latest tax certificates via your secure Allan Gray Online account by navigating to ‘Statements & documents’ >> ‘Tax certificates’.

Tax certificates for the tax year ended 28 February 2025 will be distributed and/or made available online before the tax-filing season opens.

Taxpayers can view third-party data certificates that were submitted to SARS by financial services providers on their behalf via their eFiling profile. For a detailed explanation on how to access third-party data certificate information, refer to the ‘How to view submitted third party data returns or data files via eFiling’ guide on the SARS website.

You are required to declare the contributions, transfers, other income and withdrawals made, as well as the net return on all of your tax-free investments, as found on your IT3(s) tax certificate.

If you have transferred between product providers during the tax year, it is important that both providers issue you with a tax-free investment certificate (IT3(s)) reflecting the transferred amount. This is to ensure that SARS does not incorrectly recognise the transfer-in amount as a contribution, which may be subject to penalties if the amount exceeds R36 000 for the tax year.

Any savings component withdrawals requested by a taxpayer will be recorded under the new source code 3926 on a taxpayer’s IRP5/IT3(a) tax certificate.

There are two ways in which income may arise in a taxpayer’s hands – it may be received by or it may accrue to the taxpayer. The date of accrual of a lump sum from a retirement fund or living annuity determines when the amount will be included in the taxpayer’s gross income, i.e. the tax year in which the taxpayer will be assessed.

This means that if you submitted an exit instruction for a retirement fund or living annuity in the 2024/2025 tax year, you will need to declare the lump sum amount in your 2024/2025 tax return, even if the tax directive was submitted to SARS in the 2025/2026 tax year (i.e. the transaction date falls within the 2026 tax year).

However, your IRP5/IT3(a) information will not pre-populate on your tax return and you will need to declare the information by manually completing the details. Please note that after your transaction was finalised, you would have received a tax certificate which you can use to help you complete your tax return.

This is applicable to investments in the Allan Gray Pension Preservation Fund, Provident Preservation Fund, Umbrella Pension Fund, Umbrella Provident Fund, Living Annuity and Retirement Annuity Fund.

• ‘Gross exempt local dividends’ are dividends declared by a South African company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. They will be recorded under a new source code 4306 on your ITR12 return from the 2025 tax-filing season.
• ‘Gross exempt foreign dividends’ are dividends declared by a foreign company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. They will be recorded under a new source code 4307 on your ITR12 return from the 2025 tax-filing season.

In both instances, these dividends are exempt from income tax but may be subject to South African dividend withholding tax.

• ‘Gross foreign dividends’ are dividends declared by a foreign company in a foreign jurisdiction that are subject to income tax in South Africa.

SARS requires all the dividend values explained above to be completed in separate fields in your income tax return. Gross exempt foreign dividends (source code 4307) should not be confused with gross foreign dividends (source code 4216) which are subject to income tax.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Common Reporting Standard (CRS) were introduced to facilitate and standardise the sharing of information between tax authorities around the world. In doing so, they aim to prevent investors from evading tax by housing assets and income in favourable tax jurisdictions. To comply, we provide SARS with the following information once a year for investors who have indicated that they are active in countries other than South Africa:

• Dividend and interest amounts earned
• Withdrawal amounts
• Certain static information e.g. foreign tax identification numbers

This affects investors in the following products:

• Allan Gray Unit Trust
• Allan Gray Local Investment Platform
• Allan Gray Offshore Investment Platform
• Allan Gray Endowment
• Allan Gray Tax-Free Investment (this relates to FATCA only if the amount invested is above US$50 000)

The SARS Online Query System allows you, the taxpayer, to perform certain functions online without the need to visit a SARS branch. Some of these functions relate to the filing of your tax returns. The SARS Online Query System – External Guide provides more detail on the available functionality. Examples of these are:

Request your tax number
If you are an existing South African taxpayer and you do not have your income tax number on record, you can request it from SARS by completing your personal details.

Check your SARS auto-assessment status
The SARS Online Query Service functionality allows you to check whether you have been auto-assessed.

SARS Tax Return Status Dashboard
The SARS Tax Return Status Dashboard allows you to check the progress of your income tax return once you have submitted it. You are able to view submission, verification/audit and refund processing statuses.

Taxpayers married in community of property
Taxpayers who are married in community of property are taxed on half of their and their spouse’s income and capital gains, unless the income has been specifically excluded from the communal estate by the taxpayer when completing their return. This means that the total amount of income earned by a taxpayer and their spouse should reflect on both their tax returns and SARS will apply the 50% split on assessment.

If you have declared to SARS in a previous return that you are married in community of property and SARS has verified this information with the Department of Home Affairs, SARS will pre-populate your and your spouse’s investment income on both your returns. Where this has not been done, you and your spouse must declare these amounts on your tax returns. Both your and your spouse’s capital gains or losses need to be declared and will not be pre-populated. Where applicable, a spouse who is not registered for tax will be guided to auto-registration.

Please refer to the SARS website for more detail of this process.

For more information regarding your tax submissions, please contact SARS directly on 0800 007 277 or visit www.sars.gov.za.