How to access your South African retirement annuity?
When you financially emigrate, you have the rare opportunity to gain early access to any retirement annuity savings before retirement date. You can either transfer these offshore, or you can leave such policies as they are in South Africa.
You can access your South African retirement annuity through the following process:
- Request the administrator of your retirement annuity fund to complete a Request for a tax deduction directive – Retirement annuity funds (Form C), which is a form the South African Revenue Service (SARS) will provide to the administrator.
- If you are in the process of emigrating, you must provide two supporting documents:
- a Tax clearance certificate (IT21(a)) – Application form for tax clearance certificate (from SARS), and
- a signed and bank-stamped Form MP336 (b) – Request for settling in allowance (from your local commercial bank).
- If you have already financially emigrated, you must provide the following:
- your certificate of residency issued by the relevant tax authority of the country in which you now live. (Note that this certificate must be issued in accordance with the Double Taxation Agreement between South Africa and your country of residence.)
- a copy of your Tax clearance certificate – Emigration, issued by SARS. (If you are unable to produce the required tax clearance certificate, you must provide an affidavit with the reason why the tax clearance certificate cannot be provided.)
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