SARS crackdown on undeclared crypto and offshore accounts starts next month

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) will soon have a new weapon to track crypto and offshore accounts The South African Revenue Service (SARS)will soon have a new weapon to track crypto and offshore accounts. The revenue service has officially published its final rules for the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and the expandedAutomatic Exchange of Information regime, which take effect on March 1 2026. They aim to bring cryptocurrency transactions and offshore financial accounts into the same global reporting system that already tracks traditional banking activity.

Accordingto Micaela Paschini, Team Lead: Tax Legal at Tax Consulting South Africa, “From 1 March 2026, global reporting standards reach your digital and cross-border wealth. If you hold crypto through offshore structures, trade on foreign exchanges, or maintain cross-border financial interests that have not been carefully disclosed and classified, the risk landscape has shifted materially.” She added that offshore and digital assets are no longer beyondSARS’sreach, putting undeclared holdings at greater risk of detection and enforcement. “The notion that offshore or digital activity exists beyond meaningful tax visibility is increasingly untenable”, she said.

She also said that “once transaction-level data is transmitted in a structured format, SARS can reconcile declared income against reported activity with far greater precision. Risk profiling accelerates. Audit selection becomes more targeted.

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Patterns of non-disclosure stand out.” “South Africa is now firmly embedded in the global reporting network that captures offshore financial interests and crypto-asset activity with increasing precision. “The days of assuming that digital equals invisible or offshore equals insulated are ending. The critical question is whether your declared tax position aligns with the data SARS will receive. If there is doubt, the time to address it is before the reporting framework begins operating in full”

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