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VAT 404 - VAT Guide for Vendors
VAT News - SARS

iPortals conforms to all SARS standards for electronic invoice distribution. This incudes transmission and document encryption standards.

• Written Permission: Before you may send someone an Electronic Tax Invoice, you first must obtain written permission from such a person that he will accept Tax Invoices from you in electronic format. “Written” does not exclusively mean a hand written or printed-paper document, but includes electronic documents, for example an email message to confirm acceptance. This written acceptance must be retained for a period of 5 years from the date of last concluded transaction with such a person. Please note: You do not have to obtain any permission in advance from SARS to send Electronic Tax Invoices, but it is of the utmost importance to ensure that you are absolutely legally compliant, before utilizing this method of communication.


• The Tax Invoice must be at least 128 bit encrypted and/or digitally signed: The reason for this requirement is to ensure a tamper free document. You do not have to understand the technical inner workings of this specification, but it is important to ensure that your Tax Invoices are compliant with this requirement. At present the worldwide standard for sharing encrypted or digitally signed documents is the .PDF format. Free .PDF reader software is available from Adobe.com – so it makes it easy to share documents in this format. Please note – unsigned or unencrypted PDF documents are not secure and is editable. Unfortunately you have to invest in very expensive software to be able to encrypt documents or you have to utilize the services of a reputable service provider where your documents are automatically encrypted in the communication process. All Tax Invoices communicated / shared through our platform is automatically encrypted and/or digitally signed.


• The Electronic Tax Invoice must be sent over a secure line: This means that the process of communication / delivery of the Electronic Tax Invoice must also be secured by means of 128 bit encryption. Secure (encrypted) communication via the internet will be indicated by means of “https” in the web address or the communication process. Ordinary email processes are not compliant with this requirement.


• Retention of the Tax Invoice for a period of 5 Years: You have to retain the original encrypted / digitally signed Electronic Tax Invoice for a period of minimum 5 years from the date of the transaction. The previous version of the VAT 404 Guide stipulated that, should you utilize the services of a Service Provider to communicate / deliver / store the Electronic Tax Invoice, such Service Provider must also retain your Electronic Tax Invoice for a period of 5 years and must keep it accessible for SARS, should SARS need access to the document. Although not a requirement in the latest VAT 404 Guide, it will just ensure the credibility of the Electronic Tax Invoices This means that should you send an Electronic Tax Invoice as an attachment to an email message, then your Internet Service Provider (ISP) should preferably retain a copy of the invoice for a period of 5 years. It must be clear that no ISP will retain any of your email attachments and keep it available for SARS for a period of 5 years. By utilising the services of iPortals, all Electronic Tax Invoices are retained by us for a minimum period of 5 years.

Unencrypted emails can be read by any moderately-skilled hacker leaving you suscpetible to internet crimes such as Phising, Identity Theft and Viruses. Keep your email communications private with

Secure Certificates let you digitally sign emails to prove that the attachments and email content actually came from you. Secure Email Certificates allow you to easily encrypt your emails and ensure that the attachments and messages may only be read by the intended recipients. Digitally signing email with a digital Certificate means that it is impossible for anyone to edit the content of your mail without the recipient being alerted.

iPortals utilize Secure Email Certificates for email encryption. Each clients emails are sent from a unique email account and the cetificate is applied to this email account.

Our expertise in encryption gives you the easiest way to guarantee your privacy.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet. SSL encrypt the segments of network connections above the Transport Layer, using asymmetric cryptography for key exchange, symmetric encryption for privacy, and message authentication codes for message integrity.

The iPortals Document Portal is fully secured with 128bit GeoTrust SSL Certificates and all client portals enjoys the benefit of this.

Advanced password creation algorythms is used to generate portals password for users of the portal that wishes to gain access to their documentation on implementation of solution.

The Tax Invoice must be at least 128 bit encrypted and/or digitally signed: The reason for this requirement is to ensure a tamper free document. At present the worldwide standard for sharing encrypted or digitally signed documents is the .PDF format. Free .PDF reader software is available from Adobe.com – so it makes it easy to share documents in this format. Please note – unsigned or unencrypted PDF documents are not secure and is editable. All Tax Invoices communicated / shared through our platform is automatically encrypted and/or digitally signed.

iPortals utilizes 128bit RC4 Encryption on all documents communicated.

• The reports are transfered securely over HTTPS (SSL) Web Services.
• All data is encrypted and stored in a secure MS SQL database.
• We sign a non-disclosure agreement with our clients.

• All data is encrypted and stored in a secure MS SQL database.
• GeoTrust SSL Certificates
• System architecture: ASP.net
• Document Encryption: 128bit RC4
• Secure Email Certificates