In the last decade, two significant changes were introduced to the tax legislation for non-life insurance companies: The first was introduced in the 2012 taxation laws amendments which removed the discretion that was held by SARS to make adjustments to the regulatory reserve amounts applied for tax purposes.

The second change was introduced in the 2015 taxation laws amendments in response to the Prudential Authority’s implementation of the Solvency Assessment and Management (SAM) framework. Under this amendment, SARS required non-life insurance companies to deduct amounts recognised as insurance contract liabilities, in line with those amounts recognised for accounting purposes under IFRS 4 Insurance Contracts (IFRS 4).