Specialist: Tax Avoidance & Reportable Arrangements (TARA) at The South African Revenue Service (SARS)

 Job Purpose

• To examine the legislative, taxpayer base and economic environments in order to determine likely forms of future tax avoidance schemes and put in place measures to counter these

Education and Experience

Minimum Qualification & Experience Required

• Relevant Bachelor's Degree / Advanced Diploma (NQF 7) AND 8-10 years' experience in a tax audit or tax legal similar environment, of which 3-4 years ideally at junior management level.

Job Outputs:

Process

• Provide advice to auditors regarding tax avoidance investigations.
• Conduct presentations regarding the indicators of tax avoidance structures.
• Detect and identify tax avoidance schemes and/or structures and/or legislative loopholes through analyzing the submitted reportable arrangements, scrutinizing financial journals, press reports and the JSE's SENS announcements.
• Offer and provide support to Investigative Audit and Compliance Audit in respect of tax avoidance matters / GAAR (General Anti Avoidance Regulations) investigations.
• Identify developing trends and schemes of tax avoidance and make recommendations regarding ways to address these issues.
• Write technical articles, opinions, motivations for amendments to legislation, comment on technical papers.
• Analyze and make recommendations about improvements to specialist systems, procedures, and associated area's practice.
• Contributes to the optimum utilization of org. resources, advising effective planning and development of area of specialization resource plans.
• Develop a single practice area in alignment with operational activity and procedural frameworks and ensure tactical implementation.
• Draw on own technical or professional expertise, knowledge & experience to identify & recommend tactical solutions to defined problems in practices.
• Integrate business information, compare, analyze & produce reports to identify trends, discrepancies & inconsistencies for decision making purposes.
• Optimize goal achievement through tactical strategy implementation and optimization of practices, processes & systems across an internal value chain.
• Plan for value-added, continuous practice & system improvements to deliver on objectives to enhance tactical implementation and excellence.
• Proactively identify interconnected problems, determine its impact, and use to develop best fit alternatives, best practice implementation solutions.
• Translate top-down policy in relation to own practice area and communicate impact to relevant stakeholders.
• Recommend changes to optimize processes, systems, practice area and associated procedures and execute the implementation of change and innovation.

Governance

• Develop and/or align governance and compliance policies for own practice area to identify and manage risk exposure liability.

People

• Provide specialist know-how, support, advice and practice thought leadership in area of expertise.
• Integrate new knowledge and transfer skills attained through formal and informal learning opportunities in the execution of your job.

Finance

• Implement and monitor financial control, management of costs and corporate governance in area of specialization.

Client

• Develop & ensure implementation of a practice that builds service delivery excellence & encourage others to provide exceptional stakeholder service.
• Participate in the specialist practice community and contribute positively to organization knowledge management.
• Provide authoritative, specialist expertise and advice to internal and external stakeholders.

Behavioural competencies

• Honesty and Integrity
• Trust
• Respect
• Problem Solving and Analysis
• Stakeholder Engagement and Management
• Fairness and Transparency
• Analytical Thinking
• Accountability
• Conceptual Ability
• Attention to Detail
• Commitment to Continuous Learning
• Organizational Awareness
• Building Sustainability

Technical competencies

• Functional Policies and Procedures
• Reporting
• Legal Compliance
• Business Acumen
• Business Knowledge
• Creative and Innovative Thinking
• Efficiency improvement
• Legal Advisory and Interpretation
• Legal Knowledge and knowledge of ethics

Deadline:18th February,2026