When SARS changed the 2022 annual tax return IT14 for companies, they got really clever. Not only do they want the details of the shareholders and when they acquired the shares. They also want the tax registration numbers of the shareholders.

Now, since any well designed trust structure requires that the trust owns a company that owns the assets, when preparing the company tax return, the trust’s tax number is required. If you can’t fill that in, you can’t submit the company’s return.

And, of course, once you’ve registered your trust as a taxpayer, you have to submit (hopefully Nil) tax returns for that as well. Note that trusts are not automatically, and really should never be, provisional tax payers, so at least it’s only one tax return a year.