On 01 November 2024, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) announced the introduction of automation in the handling of bonds by SARS under the Customs Modernisation Programme (CMP) Bond Automation Project, which marks a significant advancement in the modernisation of the country’s tax and customs administration. This initiative goes beyond a simple technological upgrade, representing a substantial step forward in enhancing operational efficiency, ensuring compliance, and simplifying procedures for authorities and traders/taxpayers.
As part of the CMP Bond Automation Project, several Customs Bonds specific documents and Registration Licensing and Accreditation (RLA) documents have been updated to enable the efficiency of bond registrations on the RLA dashboard. Furthermore, both the Customs and Excise Manage eAccounts External Guides underwent amendments to highlight the newly introduced option of managing bonds under the eAccount menu on the eFiling platform for Customs and Excise clients, respectively.
Further updates to the guides address the requirement that when clients provide supporting documentation for processing, these documents will be returned to the client after they have been scanned by the Branch Agent.
The updated documents can be accessed through the following links:
- SC-SE-05 – Bonds – External Policy
- SC-SE-05-A01 – Bond Assessment – External Annexure
- SC-CF-19 – Registration Licensing and Accreditation – External Policy
- SC-CF-19-A01 – Documentary Requirements – External Annexure
- SC-CF-42 – Customs Trader Portal – External Guide
- SC-DT-A-04 – Manage eAccounts on eFiling – External Guide
SE-ACC-07 – Manage eAccounts on eFiling – External Guide