Entrepreneurs need to continually be aware of their compliance status because the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has overhauled the system from one that relied on tax clearance certificates, to a tax compliance system.

Previously a certificate was valid for 12 months and would be assessed only once a year. Now it is a live system where compliance can be checked anytime, and continually.

The changes were necessitated by loopholes in the system that enabled people to regress on their tax compliance once they had received a tax clearance certificate.

Pieter Faber, from the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, and Mark Kingon, from SARS, share important information on changes to tax clearance certificates below.

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