Medical aid tax changes for South Africa
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) says that, in line with its strategic objective to make it easy for all taxpayers to meet their personal tax obligations, it will implement changes to medical aid data reporting requirements, effective 5 October 2024.
SARS said it has recognised the challenges faced by taxpayers in submitting medical aid data accurately and on time.
So, to simplify this process and reduce the burden on taxpayers, SARS is making changes to the data that is required from medical aid schemes.
Medical aid data changes include:
- Provision of data on disabled principal members and their dependents.
- Data of persons making payment on behalf of principal members.
- Separate non-allowable from the allowable expenses, currently reported as claims not paid or covered by medical schemes on the IT3(f) certificate.
SARS said that these changes would also allow it to reduce audit interventions, enable speedy assessment of tax returns and assist in allocating medical tax credits to the correct taxpayers.
Effective 5 October 2024, medical scheme contributions must be provided in line with the requirements outlined in the new Business Requirements Specification (BRS) (v10.9-2).
For most South African taxpayers, the changes impact employers who pay PAYE, and the medical aids they are members of who will be required to update their reporting methods.
SARS said the updated Medical Aid solution will be available via Connect: Direct and Secured File Gateway [HTTPS] for Trade Testing, scheduled for 16 September 2024 to 4 October 2024.
Any trade testing queries can be referred to [email protected] with the subject line “Medical Trade Testing”.
The revenue service also noted that the Test Platform will remain open throughout the submission period to ensure that all the data files that have submitted conform to the specified BRS prior to being submitted to Production.
“Testing support is available to address any issues identified during testing, and the Production Platform is also open,” it said.
SARS encourage relevant parties to submit their third-party data for the 2024 tax year as soon as possible but no later than 31 October 2024.
To ensure a smooth transition, SARS will grant a grace period of six months for partial submission of the requested data, while stakeholders obtain resources to achieve full compliance.
For cases of partial compliance, reasons and a commitment date for full compliance must be submitted to [email protected].
Loading ...
