On 30 June 2026, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) announced that Customs and Excise would implement a new standardised query mailbox system and escalation protocol on 01 July 2026.
For more details, see the letter that the Director: Customs Border Operations, Ports of Entry, Customs and Excise Compliance sent to stakeholders:
Streamlining of the Customs and Excise Query Mailboxes
SARS Customs and Excise will implement a new standardised Query Mailbox System and Escalation Protocol on Wednesday, 01 July 2026.
The goal of the new Customs Query and Escalation Protocol is to enhance operational efficiency, reduce redundancy, improve trader experience and collect feedback to inform service enhancements, in alignment with SARS’s service philosophy that the “best service is no service”.
The rationalised system will simplify trader engagement with Customs and Excise Operations, reduce the number of mailboxes, implement a uniform escalation process across all Customs and Excise divisions and embed a customer satisfaction survey in all the mailboxes.
Stakeholders and traders are requested to familiarise themselves with the new Customs and Excise Query and Escalation Protocols.
Traders must use the new mailboxes, follow the revised escalation process, indicate the nature of their query clearly in the email subject line and complete the short satisfaction survey once the query has been resolved. This feedback will help SARS.
Resources available:
Complete the Customs resolutions process:
New email queries and escalation process:
- How to Escalate Sea Modality Queries
- How to Escalate Land Modality Queries
- How to Escalate Air Modality Queries
- How to Escalate Customs & Excise Compliance Cluster Queries