Welcome to Legal Counsel

About Legal Counsel

Legal Counsel’s main purpose is to lead the realisation of SARS’s strategic goals through –

• advice on development of new tax legislation as well as on the maintenance of the existing tax legislation and development and drafting of new customs and excise legislation
• negotiations on an international level to improve South Africa’s international treaty network and co-operation amongst tax and customs administrations worldwide
• facilitation and provision of direction on the uniform application and interpretation of all tax legislation administered by SARS
• providing a dispute resolution process for tax, customs and excise disputes, as well as litigation on all tax and customs matters
• providing legal support to officials on regional level
• providing corporate legal service to SARS

What to expect from us

Legal Counsel undertakes to –

• make Tariff Amendments available around 15:00 on the Thursday preceding the publication of the Government Notice in the Gazette
• continuously update this area with documents depicting the latest developments
• circulate draft documents for public comment for a minimum of one week
• continuously improve the quality of this area to serve as a proper database for our clients

Make sure we receive your comments 

Don’t miss the opportunity to provide SARS with your comments on proposed changes to legislation.

All draft documents can be found under Draft Documents for Public Comment.

Access to Information

Under Primary Legislation, look for Access to Information – it tells you all you need to know about SARS and the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA)

Useful links 

• Operational tax-related enquiries (income tax, value-added tax etc), including enquiries relating to customs and excise duty should be directed to the SARS National Call Centre
• Suspicious activities or suspected tax crimes can be reported to SARS – read more
• To query your debt or for rescission of judgments, visit Debt Management
• Business rescues or compromises (in terms of section 155 of the Companies Act) correspondence or notices should be directed by e-mail to sarsdebtmanagement2@sars.gov.za