Well done SARS! They finally woke up.

I’ve written on several occasions about taxes that SARS can’t hope to collect.

Amongst them are –

• Transfer Duty on the sale of shares in a Residential Property Company.
• Securities Transfer Tax on the sale of shares in a company.
• CGT on the sale of shares in a company.

Why was this? Because the only place where the shareholding of a company was recorded was on the share register on somebody’s computer.

Now, however, there’s an addition to the Company Tax Return form IT14 which requires that the share register be disclosed. This all starts from year ended 2022.

They probably got the idea from the General Laws (Anti Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Act of 2022, which was passed in a futile attempt to avoid grey listing.

So now, if there’s a change in shareholding, they will know.

There’s more to it than that, however. Once a 2022 tax return has been submitted –

• you will no longer be able to backdate the sale of shares to minimise any tax based on market value.
• nor will you be able to backdate donations to an old shelf company and backdate the change of ownership to your trust or to an old shelf trust.