7 June 2024 – SARS has recognised the challenges faced by taxpayers in submitting medical aid data accurately and on time. To simplify this process and reduce the burden on taxpayers, SARS is making changes on the data that is required from medical aid schemes.
The changes include:
- Provision of data on disabled Principal members and their dependents
- Data of persons making payment on behalf of principal members.
- Separate non-allowable from the allowable expenses, currently reported as claims not paid or covered by medical schemes on the IT3(f) certificate.
- Field 4, File Layout Version must be 3.
- For inclusivity of disabled taxpayers with multiple disabilities, the Principal Member and Dependent Disability Information containers in the Medical Scheme Contributions external BRS (Version 1.07) have been expanded to allow the selection of multiple disabilities. For ease of reference, the changes in the latest BRS (Version 1.08) are as follows:
- Under the Principal Member Disability Information record, fields 261 to 265 have been added and field 191 has been amended
- Additionally, the Dependent Disability Information record has additional fields from 266 to 270 and field 216 has been amended.
These changes will also allow SARS to reduce audit interventions, and enable speedy assessment of tax returns, and assist in allocating medical tax credits to the correct taxpayers. Effective September 2024, medical aids are expected to provide the requested data in line with the conditions outlined in the external Medical Scheme Contributions Business Requirement Specification (BRS).
The Medical Aid updated solution will be availed via Connect: Direct® and Secured File Gateway [HTTPS] for Trade Testing from 12 August to 06 September 2024, refer trade testing queries to [email protected] with the subject Medical Trade Testing.
To allow for a smooth transition, SARS will grant a grace period of 6 months for partial submission of the requested data while stakeholders attain resources that consent to full compliance. Where such cases of partial compliance occur, reasons and a commitment date for full compliance will be required.
For more information. please see the Third Party Data Submission Platform webpage.
