This notification came through my email today and why am I not surprised as we know the South African government is desperate for funds. What is interesting to note is if you are sending the funds to yourself on a cold wallet they would also like to know. Any incoming or outgoing transactions you will need to fill out the form and this is for FIAT and crypto even if you are moving it to another exchange or private wallet. I am not sure what limit would trigger this and if this is for any amount. I guess DEX's are where we need to play and forget the CEX's.
The change comes as South Africa improves oversight of the rapidly evolving crypto market. The country’s Revenue Service (SARS) is urging individuals, crypto exchanges, and intermediaries involved in crypto transactions to register with the authority, as failure to do so is now illegal.
According to the article the South African Revenue Services (SARS) expects the 2025 crypto market to be worth a $278 million revenue booster. This is crazy and absurd to think people will be paying as much as 40% -45%.
Don't get me wrong I do not mind paying a reasonable amount in taxes, but the word reasonable has to be applied. Thankfully I have quite a few different options and none include using South Africa as the off ramp ad have looked into various banks who will gladly accept a crypto transfer and doing the necessary conversions before depositing into your account.
I will be changing my residency and this could speed things up depending on how high the prices go later this year. Why hand over a huge percentage when there is no need and just buy a property elsewhere instead and move.
There are a few different types of services available in Dubai and Bahrain where banks offer crypto services. The one (Bahrain) will service up to $4 million daily in Bitcoin taking about 10 minutes to do the transaction but will take anywhere between 3-5 days depending on your bank accounts processing time. The other service I read up on will do this in Dubai as an over the counter transaction with a fee of 0.25% at the then market rate including stable coins. Pallapay is one such financial institution and offers this service for any crypto.
Obviously this is not ideal if the market does very little, but more importantly at least their is options available and one can weave amongst the shadows. Not ideal, but at least countries are starting to show their cards ad am sure there will be may other options available over the coming months that are not available right now. I have left one footprint with my initial deposit way back in 2018 and that is one too many and once off the exchange in a cold storage wallet the trail will go cold and there will be no proof the crypto has been sold and could easily be long term storage.
I just had a feeling something like this was going to happen because the tax man is desperate to find as much revenue as possible. Many of the wealthy people in SA have left which has left a massive hole with less revenue to collect. This has to be found elsewhere and they have been looking at things like a VAT increase which shows a certain amount of desperation.
Does anyone have any ideas on what the best route would be to take as I am sure this is not only going to be SA, but other countries very soon going down a similar path.