How to get a tax clearance certificate (TCS) in South Africa

By Thomas LobbanLLB, LLM (Tax Law), Master Tax Practitioner (SA)Updated 18 June 2026

There is no longer a paper tax clearance certificate in South Africa. SARS replaced it with a Tax Compliance Status (TCS) PIN that you generate on eFiling and share with whoever needs to confirm you are compliant. The PIN lets a third party, a tender board, a bank, or a foreign-exchange desk, log in and see your live status for as long as the PIN is valid. You request it under "My Compliance Profile" on eFiling, and if your affairs are in order it is issued almost immediately.

The PIN is not a document you keep in a drawer. It points to a status that updates in real time, so if you fall out of compliance after sharing it, the person checking will see that too.

What SARS actually checks before issuing the PIN

Your compliance status is built from four things. All four must be in order for the status to read compliant:

Registration. You are registered for the tax types that apply to you.
Submission. You have no outstanding returns. A single unfiled return, even an old one, turns the status non-compliant.
Debt. You have no outstanding tax debt, or you have a payment arrangement or suspension in place for it.
Relevant supporting detail. For specific requests (for example a foreign investment allowance) SARS checks the extra information that type of request needs.

This is why people are surprised when a PIN does not issue. The blocker is usually an old outstanding return or a small unpaid balance, not a problem with the request itself.

The types of TCS you can request

When you request a status you choose the purpose, because SARS issues the PIN against a specific reason:

Good Standing, the general confirmation that you are compliant, used for tenders, contracts and employment checks.
Approval for International Transfer (AIT), used when you move funds offshore (this replaced the older Foreign Investment Allowance type).
Tender, for specific procurement situations.

Most individuals who simply need to prove they are up to date use Good Standing.

How to request the PIN, step by step

Log in to eFiling and open My Compliance Profile (MCP). This shows the four indicators above, each green or red.
Clear any red indicator first. If a return is outstanding, file it; if there is a balance, pay it or set up an arrangement. The status will not go green until the underlying problem is fixed.
Select Tax Compliance Status Request and choose the type, for example Good Standing.
Complete and submit the request.
If your profile is compliant, SARS issues the PIN, which you can have sent by SMS or view on the TCS dashboard and print as a TCS result letter.
Give the PIN (and your tax reference number) to the party that needs to verify you. They use it to view your status, not your full tax records.

A worked example

Say a sole proprietor wants a Good Standing PIN to bid for a contract, but two income-tax returns from earlier years were never filed. Each outstanding return can attract an administrative non-compliance penalty under section 210 of the Tax Administration Act, a fixed monthly amount based on taxable income that ranges from R250 to R16,000 and recurs each month the return stays outstanding.

Even at the bottom of that scale, two outstanding returns left for four months is R250 x 2 x 4 = R2,000 in penalties, and the submission indicator stays red the whole time, so no PIN issues. File the two returns and settle the penalty, the indicator turns green, and the Good Standing PIN can then be generated in the same session. The lesson is that the TCS request is the easy part; getting compliant first is the work.

Frequently asked questions

Is a tax clearance certificate still a thing in South Africa?

Not as a paper certificate. SARS withdrew the printed tax clearance certificate and replaced it with the Tax Compliance Status system. You now generate a TCS PIN on eFiling and share it, and the person checking sees your live compliance status rather than a static document.

How long does it take to get a TCS PIN?

If all four compliance indicators are green, the PIN is issued almost immediately and can be sent to you by SMS or viewed on your eFiling TCS dashboard. The delay people experience is not SARS being slow; it is the time it takes to clear an outstanding return or debt so the status can go compliant.

Why does my tax compliance status show non-compliant?

Usually because of an outstanding return or an unpaid balance. The status is built from registration, submission, debt and any relevant supporting detail, and a single red indicator makes the whole status non-compliant. Open My Compliance Profile to see which indicator is red and fix that item.

How long is a TCS PIN valid?

The PIN points to your live status, so it stays usable while you remain compliant, and a third party who has the PIN sees your status update in real time. If you stop being compliant, the same PIN will show the changed status, which is why staying up to date matters as much as getting the PIN in the first place.

Can someone see my full tax affairs with my PIN?

No. The PIN lets an authorised third party verify your compliance status, compliant or not, for the purpose you selected. It does not expose your returns, income or assessments.

Get compliant first, then request the PIN

The whole exercise turns on being up to date. Our guide on whether you need to submit a return sets out who is obliged to file, and if you are not yet set up on eFiling, see how to register for SARS eFiling. If a balance is the blocker, the Basic income tax and PAYE calculator shows what your assessment should look like so you can check the figure before you pay, and our explainer on changing your banking details with SARS covers a common reason a refund that would clear a balance gets held up.

SARS sources:

Try it on your own numbers

TaxRationale runs this computation for your exact situation, free, with your data encrypted on your own device.

Start for Free