Manage your Tax Compliance Status

What’s new?

June 2021 – Prior to requesting the TCS for emigration, you should have completed the Cease to be a Resident process. See Cease to be a Resident webpage for more details. 

Note: The issuing of the printed Tax Clearance Certificate (TCC) was stopped from 2 November 2019. Since the new Tax Compliance Status (TCS) system in 2015, we advised that the printed TCC will be stopped at a future date.  All TCCs currently in circulation will be cancelled. The TCS PIN enables you to authorise any third party (an organisation or government) to view your status online via eFiling. It will present your overall tax compliance status at the date and time of viewing it. To protect taxpayer confidentiality, no other info will be accessible to a third party.  

What is it?

In our continued effort to improve compliance and to make it even easier for taxpayers to manage their tax affairs, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has introduced an enhanced Tax Compliance Status System.
Being tax compliant and ‘paying your fair share’ is not just good for you, but also contributes to the positive growth of our country’s economy which in turn benefits all South Africans.  

The TCS system is available for the following applications:

• Good standing
• Tender
• Foreign Investment Allowance
• Emigration

To apply for your TCS, you can access the TCS system by selecting the TAX STATUS menu option on eFiling.

What is it for? 

The new system will make it easier for taxpayers to obtain their Tax Compliance Status (TCS) PIN via eFiling.
The TCS PIN must be used by authorised third parties to verify your compliance status online via SARS eFiling.
It is important to remember that a taxpayer’s compliance status is not static and changes according to his/her continued compliance with tax requirements.  

What do I need to do?

With this in mind, in order to be tax compliant you should make sure that:

• You do not have any outstanding tax returns
• You do not owe any money to SARS unless a payment arrangement or suspension of debt has been agreed to
• You are registered for all the tax products that you are liable for
• Your registered particulars are updated. For more information on how to update registered particulars click here.
• You have either merged (via the Merge tool on eFiling) or declared (on the ERC01 form available as part of the TCS process on eFiling), all your registered tax reference numbers. For more information on Merge, click here.

The new TCS system has at its heart the “My Compliance Profile (MCP)” functionality. The MCP affords taxpayers the opportunity to view their tax compliance status online as determined by SARS in order to remedy any non-compliance identified. The introduction of the MCP empowers taxpayers with more information about their tax compliance and forms the basis for the overall compliance status issued with regards to TCS applications (for example for Tender or Good standing and others).
For more information on the tax compliance status processes follow the links below: 

• How to access “My Compliance Profile” (MCP) via SARS eFiling
• How to request your Tax Compliance Status
• How to verify Tax Compliance Status

Need help?
If you need help to obtain your Tax Compliance Status, watch our helpful tutorial video on the SARS YouTube channel by clicking on the image below.

To access this page in different languages click on the links below:

• Afrikaans
• isiZulu
• Sepedi
• Sesotho
• XitsongaJune