Question NW159 to the Minister of Finance

Reply:

Without getting into taxpayer confidential information as prescribed in Chapter 6 of the tax administration act, in a scenario where a taxpayer passes on, a family member or Executor of the deceased estate would normally inform relevant parties including SARS of the death of the taxpayer so that the matter may be coded accordingly as deceased. This includes publishing the death notice on the Government Gazette.

Where SARS does not have a record indicating that a matter is an estate, such a matter is treated as active and the debt is pursued consistently until it is paid or a payment arrangement is made. SARS would like to encourage executors of the estates and family members of the deceased, to inform SARS as soon as possible once the family member passes on. This will allow SARS to immediately change the status from an “active” taxpayer to an “Estate Late” status. This will stop all future returns and allow the Executor to finalise the final return of the Estate to ensure that all outstanding tax returns, to the date of death, are filed and that applicable tax amounts are dealt with appropriately to have the estate account wound up accordingly.

SARS is currently working on a project to automate the coding of estates through the use of third party data, but this will take time.