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vat modernisation
South Africa

Guiding you through the upcoming changes to SARS VAT reporting rules.

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Stay in the loop and keep up to speed.


VAT Modernisation has been built as a resource for South African businesses that are (or will be) busy with navigating SARS’s newly introduced VAT reporting requirements, which are planned to come into effect by 2028.

That may seem like a long time away but as with POPIA in 2020, or even the introduction of VAT itself in 1991, such timelines pass quickly and before you know it, your business is in a scramble to achieve compliance, leading to a sub-optimal (and often overpriced) solution put in place.

Our mission is to help you avoid that - by keeping you up to date with the latest SA VAT modernisation developments, key considerations and available compliance solutions!

Your handy, VAT modernisation glossary

If you’ve read the published SARS discussion paper or anything about VAT modernisation in South Africa (or worldwide), you’ve probably come across one or more of the below terms. Allow us to demystify the jargon and make further VAT modernisation reading a breeze with this handy glossary:

In general, this refers to the updating or modernisation of a country’s VAT reporting requirements to be consistent with the evolving global economic, digital, and regulatory environment, with a specific purpose of improving visibility into vendors’ VAT transactions and combatting existing VAT reporting fraud.

In South Africa, VAT modernisation refers to SARS’s initiative to update the existing VAT reporting framework that has remained relatively unchanged since its introduction in 1991 and transition away from its current, periodic self-reporting framework to a framework of real-time VAT reporting and data transmission.

The process of digitally exchanging documents with a strictly structured or machine-readable data format (e.g. XML). This in turn, enables such documents to be automatically processed by the recipient’s systems without any manual intervention.

Software that enables a business to send out their documents in a user’s desired e-invoice format, usually via an e-invoicing platform or portal. Ideally, this software integrates directly with a business’s existing ERP or accounting system, allowing for automatic generation of e-invoices as soon as they are raised in the ERP, while simultaneously removing the risk or cost of any system changeover.

The process of transmitting all vendor transaction data that impacts the final VAT calculation in real time. While SARS has not specifically defined the exact fields and level of granularity that would need to be transmitted under real-time VAT reporting, many overseas tax authorities have implemented their own real-time reporting requirements where specified document data underlying each individual transaction needs to be transmitted soon after the transaction occurs.

Such requirements are often referred to overseas as Continuous Transaction Controls (CTC).

An international network, adopted by many countries overseas, over which companies are able to exchange e-invoices. While PEPPOL is not an e-invoicing software, it is a network through which many e-invoicing software connect to via a PEPPOL Access Point. The PEPPOL Network can be particularly useful when two businesses typically trade using different e-invoicing formats.

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