Nov 9, 2026

SARS and Garnishees

If one of your employees owes SARS money and ignores it for long enough, SARS doesn’t need to take them to court to get paid — it can simply instruct you, the employer, to deduct the amount from their salary and pay it over directly. This power isn’t new, but SARS has just revised how it applies to payroll, and it’s worth every business owner understanding exactly how it works, because getting it wrong can land you, not just your employee, in a difficult position.

What a “third-party appointment” actually is

SARS calls this an AA88 (or ITA88, for income tax specifically) third-party appointment. The power comes from Section 179(1) of the Tax Administration Act, No. 28 of 2011, which allows SARS to appoint any person who holds money for a taxpayer, or owes a taxpayer money, to pay that money over to SARS instead — up to the amount of the taxpayer’s outstanding tax debt.

An employer is the most common example of this kind of “third party,” because an employer owes its employees money every month, in the form of salary. But the same power can apply to a bank holding a taxpayer’s deposit, a business that owes a supplier money, or anyone else who holds funds on a taxpayer’s behalf.

Importantly, SARS can make this appointment without giving further notice to either the taxpayer or the third party beforehand. If you’re the employer, the AA88 notice itself is often the first you’ll hear of it.

When SARS actually uses this power

This isn’t a tool SARS reaches for casually. Based on SARS’s own guidance and recent reporting, an AA88 appointment typically only follows:

• The taxpayer has an outstanding tax debt or administrative penalty.
• SARS has sent a final demand letter, which the taxpayer ignored.
• There’s no dispute underway over the debt.
• SARS can identify who is holding the taxpayer’s money — in this case, you, as the employer.

So by the time an AA88 notice lands on your desk, SARS has usually already tried, and failed, to collect directly from the employee.

What changed in October 2026

SARS announced a revised schedule for the AA88 process, specifically for appointments it generates automatically for Personal Income Tax administrative penalties and assessed tax debt. Two practical changes stand out:

• Employers now get more lead time to load an AA88 deduction before a payroll run closes, instead of the notice arriving too late to action in that pay cycle.
• Fewer repeated appointments and cancellations. Employers who process payroll for several staff have previously had to deal with AA88 notices being issued, cancelled, and reissued for the same debt, which created confusion and extra admin. SARS says this should now happen less often.

In short: the underlying power hasn’t changed, but SARS has made the administrative side of it less disruptive for employers — which is a genuinely useful fix if you’ve dealt with AA88 notices before.

What you actually have to do if you receive one

If SARS appoints your business as a third party under an AA88 notice, you’re legally obliged to act on it. In practice, that means:

• Withhold the specified amount from that employee’s salary or wages in the relevant pay period.
• Pay it over to SARS, not to the employee, by the date SARS specifies.
• Keep a record of the notice and what you withheld, in case the employee queries their payslip or disputes the deduction later.

A few things worth knowing:

• SARS may instruct you to collect only part of the outstanding debt, not the whole amount, in a single pay period.
• The amount stated on the AA88 notice may not exactly match the employee’s actual outstanding balance with SARS — if something looks off, that’s worth querying with SARS or a tax professional, not simply ignoring.
• Ignoring a valid AA88 notice is not a safe option. As the appointed third party, you can become personally liable for the amount you should have withheld and paid over.

A practical heads-up for your payroll process

If you run payroll yourself, or have someone in your business handling it, this is a good moment to make sure AA88 notices don’t get missed in the inbox shuffle. A notice that arrives a day or two before payroll closes, and sits unread, can turn into a compliance problem that was entirely avoidable. Build a habit of checking for SARS correspondence addressed to the business specifically, not just the usual tax return and VAT reminders.

How FAASTT can help

If you handle your own payroll and an AA88 notice lands in your inbox, we’re happy to help you work out exactly what it requires, confirm the figures make sense, and make sure it’s actioned correctly and on time — so a routine SARS collection notice doesn’t turn into a bigger problem for your business.

If you’re not sure how to handle a notice like this, get in touch and we’ll walk you through it.

Sources

• SARS can take the money you owe directly from your employer (BusinessTech, 27 October 2026)
• Changes to Third Party Appointments (AA88) Process for Employers (SARS, 27 October 2026)