Government recently announced that the South African Reserve Bank (“SARB”) component of Financial Emigration will be phased out and replaced by a more stringent verification test. The tax portion of Financial Emigration will remain, albeit seemingly more strenuous and complex. The changes will come into effect from 1 March 2021 and will effectively prevent South Africans who wish to emigrate and exit South Africa’s tax base from withdrawing their retirement funds (or any other SA policy) from South Africa, until an unbroken period of 3 years has passed.

This will no doubt throw a spanner in the works for many South Africans looking to leave South Africa permanently. Those who previously delayed, may now need to accelerate their plans to leave or  avoid having one’s retirement “nest egg” trapped in South Africa.

Many have reached out for guidance hereon. As such, Tax Consulting South Africa is hosting a webinar on the topic with a panel of experts who wrote the LexisNexis textbook on South African Immigration/Emigration and the tax implications thereon. This is a timely webinar on the topic, seeing as your planning will need to align with the first “Expat Tax” provisional payment due to SARS at the end of August 2020.