Section 35
Mandatory protection of certain records of South African Revenue Service
Part 2 · Access to Records of Public Bodies · Chapter 4 — Grounds for Refusal of Access to Records
(1) Subject to subsection (2), the information officer of the South African Revenue Service, referred to in section 2(3), must refuse a request for access to a record of that Service if it contains information which was obtained or is held by that Service for the purposes of enforcing legislation concerning the collection of revenue as defined in section 1 of the South African Revenue Service Act, 1997 (Act 34 of 1997).
(2) A record may not be refused in terms of subsection (1) insofar as it consists of information about the requester or the person on whose behalf the request is made.
Source: SAFLII — Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (consolidated, updated 11 October 2024) — cross-checked verbatim before publishing.
Beyond the text
What this means in practice
- SARS must refuse access to records held for enforcing revenue collection — a specific protection for taxpayer and revenue-enforcement information.
- The exception: you can still get information about yourself or the person you act for.
Relevant tool
PopiGuard helps distinguish protected revenue-enforcement records from a requester's own information.