Administrative staff
The Community
What does SARS do?
Businesses and individuals are bound by law to pay tax to Government. The actual tax is calculated according to salary earned and company profit. The required tax must be paid over to SARS. The tax revenue is sent to National Treasury.
What is Tax?
Tax is money collected by SARS from taxpayers to finance Government projects for the benefit of citizens of the country. This is used to pay for services like building schools, paying teachers, paying people who work for Government, for grants for the unemployed and single parents, pensions for old age and other social goods.
What is Customs & Excise?
Customs duties are paid by traders when they import goods with the aim of selling them to our citizens. Traders generally add this to the price when they sell the goods.
Customs taxes help to protect goods produced by SA firms for sale in the country which are then cheaper as they have no customs duties.
What is Excise?
Excise duties/taxes are imposed on the manufacturers of most used common things like petroleum and alcohol and tobacco products. Non-essential or luxury items like electronic equipment and cosmetics also attract excise taxes. The main reason for this is to contribute to revenue for the Government and it is supposed to discourage citizens from buying things like alcohol that can be harmful to human health or to the environment.
