On 03 April the South African Revenue Service (Sars) announced that it wished to clarify that “essential goods” as defined in Regulation R.398 in Government Gazette No 43148 of 25 March, other than the goods mentioned below, were exempt from Value-added Tax (VAT) on importation under Item 412.11/00.00/01.00 to Schedule 1 of the VAT Act, 1991, read with section 13(3) of that Act.
Goods that are not exempt from VAT on importation are goods that the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (Itac) has indicated are:
a) Dutiable (and no Itac certificate under Item 412.11 of Schedule No.4 of the Customs and Excise Act, 1964, has been issued);
b) the subject of applications for duty support that are currently pending before Itac; and
c) manufactured by domestic industry and Itac has determined such industry is being or is likely to be injured by imports.
The illustrative mapping of “essential goods” to their relevant tariff headings is available here:
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Goods excluded under (a) are those goods that are subject to an ordinary customs duty, as set out in Schedule No.1 to the Act, 1964, or trade remedies (anti-dumping, countervailing or safeguard duty), as set out in Schedule No.2 to the Act, 1964. A list of goods excluded under b) and c) is available.
The Itac import VAT certificate is obtainable here:
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Goods that qualify for VAT exemption and are not dutiable fall under a certificate issued by Itac in this regard and no individual applications need be submitted to Sars or Itac.
Importation will follow the normal procedure described in the external policy SC-CF-55 - Clearance declaration external policy. The import VAT exemption is only valid for direct importations and not to be cleared into bond or warehousing. CPC A 14 must be used for importations from outside the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) and CPC A 12 for importations from the BLNS (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland), with measure 412.11/00.00/01.00.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sars Customs has also set up a command centre to deal with escalations that may not have been dealt with at branch level. Your existing call reference number, transaction (SSM/LRN), can then be sent to osc@sars.gov.za.
To save duplication and time, clients are reminded that queries must be sent to the relevant branch/processing centre.
Story by: Riaan de Lange