SARS makes changes to medical aid data reporting
The South African Revenue Service has made changes to medical aid data reporting, enabling speedy assessment of tax returns and assisting in allocating medical tax credits to the correct taxpayers.
Not all medical practitioners accept medical aid payments.
Some advise their patients to pay the fee and then claim from medical aid.
SARS also offers a Medical Scheme Fees Tax Credit (MTC), a rebate that is non-refundable but used to reduce the normal tax a person pays.
According to the SARS website, 'only medical scheme contributions paid by a taxpayer for him- or herself, and his or her dependant(s) may be considered in the determination of an MTC'.
READ: SARS requires you to disclose any other streams of income
SARS has now introduced medical aid data reporting changes.
These changes are aimed at making it easier for taxpayers to make submissions.
It was implemented after complaints about submitting medical aid data accurately and on time were raised.
The changes are as follows:
- 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 reportedly 'enable speedy assessment of tax returns, and assist in allocating medical tax credits to the correct taxpayers'.
Read more about the changes here.
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