{"id":847555,"date":"2026-01-21T15:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=847555"},"modified":"2026-01-21T15:07:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:07:19","slug":"over-50000-taxpayers-cut-ties-with-sars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/847555\/over-50000-taxpayers-cut-ties-with-sars\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 50,000 taxpayers cut ties with SARS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) says over 50,000 taxpayers have ceased to be tax resident in South Africa over the past seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the revenue service’s tax statistics for 2025, it recorded more than 51,500 taxpayers ending their tax resident status on their tax returns between 2017 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This signals a worrying flood of taxpayers cutting ties with SARS and South Africa over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While tax residency is not the same as nationality, permanent residence or citizenship, it is one of the few indicators officially tracked by the government to indicate migration flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa does not officially track emigration patterns or conduct exit surveys of those leaving the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most migration statistics are sourced from third-party sources, such as the United Nations’ migrant stock report, with local migration patterns inferred from Stats SA’s population estimates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest migrant data from the United Nations shows that approximately 108,000 South Africans emigrated from the country between 2020 and 2024, and just over 1 million South Africans live abroad<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the SARS data, however, there is a more official recording of taxpayers who have cut or are cutting ties with the country, and a sense of scale of what this costs the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A taxpayer can still be a South African citizen while being a tax resident in another or multiple countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, many tax and emigration experts will quickly point out that South Africans who emigrate and leave assets behind may still have tax obligations back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing your status from resident to non-resident must be done formally through a declaration process with SARS and reflected on your tax return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the 2017 tax year, individuals were required to indicate their tax resident status on the ITR12 tax return, but not the date on which it changed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the 2021 tax year, individuals must indicate the date they ceased to be a tax resident of South Africa on their ITR12 tax return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emigration and citizenship change are done through Home Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, whether emigrating or changing tax residency, the end result is the same for South Africa \u2013 the country loses tax revenue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa losing out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While SARS has recorded over 50,000 people ending tax residency over the past seven years, it assesses the financial impact through tracking a cohort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, the group tracked the tax liability of individual taxpayers with a tax residence change over a ten-year tax period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This group was assessed since the 2015 tax year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the 2015 tax year, 46,959 taxpayers declared taxable income of R38.7 billion on which the tax payable totalled R12.8 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the 2024 tax year, the number of assessed taxpayers decreased to 37,706 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cohort’s taxable income decreased by 74.5% to R9.9 billion, and their tax payable also decreased by 75.1% to R3.2 billion\u2014a reduction of R9.6 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These decreases…were realised mainly by the bracket above R500,000 taxable income, mainly individuals between 65 to 74 years old and males,” SARS said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SARS noted that ceasing to be a South African tax resident, and similar changes in an individual’s status, can imply permanent erosion or changes in the tax base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, even a person who ceases to be a South African tax resident is still taxed on their South African-sourced income, SARS said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The changes also point to broader changes in demographics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, between 2015 and 2020, it’s clear that taxpayers in the income bracket above R500,000 were driving the change in status. This share diminished between 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At face value, it would appear that there are fewer high-income earners changing status. However, tax experts previously noted that this could also reflect fewer high-income earners remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rising trend of taxpayers in the zero to R70,000 bracket changing status, meanwhile, could point to younger people making the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SARS noted that the number of taxpayers who changed residence with a taxable income of zero to R70,000 decreased by 31.1% from 27,561 to 18,986 taxpayers in the latest stats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was followed by decreases from the taxable income above R500 000 (19.7%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SARS says over 50,000 taxpayers have ceased to be tax resident in South Africa over the past few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":651153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[3246,24568],"class_list":["post-847555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-sars","tag-tax-residence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848498,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847555\/revisions\/848498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}