SA Revenue Service had decided to put on hold the Customs Sufficient Knowledge (CSK) test until the Customs Control Act (CCA) goes live, acting chief officer customs and excise, Beyers Theron, told FTW Online today.
This comes after the revenue service postponed the August 1 implementation deadline for Reporting on Conveyances and Goods (RCG), the enhanced manifest regulations with which clearing agents now only have to comply by November 1 (see report: “Sars postpones deadline for RCG”).
The postponement of CSK and RCG have now, at least for the time being, clear up uncertainty in the industry about certain projects that Sars was primed to roll out as part of its New Customs Acts Programme.
Theron explained that Sars introduced the test “for certain client types who need to have CSK for registration and licensing purposes on the Registration Licensing and Accreditation (RLA) system.”
Theron added that, “as the CCA has not yet been operationalised, clients were told at the time that taking the test was not mandatory, but was merely to familiarise themselves with the new legislation.”
Because CSK was not mandatory, Sars found that “the process was not worth the resources and facilities allocated because only a few clients had registered.”
Nevertheless, RLA is still going live in 2019, Theron said, despite CSK not being a prerequisite.
However, question marks do seem to hover over the “legislative basis for implementing RLA,” Theron said.
