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CUSTOMS & EXCISE
HEALTH PROMOTION LEVY – Tax on Sugary Beverages:
Focus on accounting and monitoring
On 1 April 2018 South Africa introduced the Health Promotion Levy (“HPL”)
which directly impacts manufacturers of sugary beverages, from both a tax
administration and an accounting perspective. Recent experience has shown
that manufacturers impacted by HPL exclusively focused on the immediate
registration requirements communicated by the South African Revenue Service
(“SARS”) without considering the subsequent impact that HPL related activities
will have on their underlying accounting entries.
So what’s new?
The HPL came into effect on 1 April 2018. It introduced a
tax in the form of a levy on specific beverages that have
added sugar or added nutritive sweeteners as part of the
manufacturing process. The main purpose of the levy is to
attempt to both reduce the consumption of sugary drinks
for health purposes as well as to force manufacturers to
amend the product composition by replacing sugar and
nutritive sweeteners with non-caloric substitutes.
Based on communications issued by National Treasury,
the immediate objective of the HPL is to reduce obesity by
10% in South Africa by 2020. Although the motivation for
the HPL appears to be aimed at increased health
awareness, the fiscal function of the levy should not be
underestimated and it is expected to increasingly
contribute to limit tax deficits.
“The complexities inherent to the duty
at source (“DAS”) taxation system (only
for in-scope products) combined with
prescribed recovery mechanisms
(delayed by nature), requires a robust
accounting framework & accounting
system. Whilst the accounting
mechanisms need to ensure
compliance to the SARS submissions,
(prevailing penalties and interest for
non-compliance are currently in excess
of 300%, including stock forfeiture;
closure of manufacturing warehouses
and the revoking of the HPL
registrations) it also needs to ensure
effective recovery of the Levy assets.”

Determination of the most effective
trigger point in the supply chain at
which the product is deemed as being
‘removed for local consumption’ is
critical.
The legislation contains an offsetting
principle where the levy on exported
product can be offset from the
monthly payment to SARS. Failing to
take advantage of this principle will
have a significant negative impact on
working capital employed and an
increased administrative burden.
Similar HPL’s have been successfully introduced in
other countries such as Mexico and various federal
states in the United States of America, with the United
Kingdom following suit in 2018.
The HPL legislation was included in Schedule 1 Part 7
of the Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964 (“the Act”)
and the principles governing the HPL are provided for
in the Act and the Rules thereto.
HPL is collected under a duty at source (“DAS”) regime
and is therefore a manufacturing tax, as opposed to a
transactional tax (e.g. Value Added Tax). In brief, DAS
entails that the HPL is collected at “point of source”
and not “point of sale”, thus within the manufacturing
environment.
The liability for HPL generally arises at the point where
the product is manufactured and attains the essential
characteristics of the listed HPL products i.e. the
“essential character” of e.g. a sugary beverage, such as
a soft drink. At this point, SARS will generally have an
interest in the product.
The HPL legislation specifically excludes alcoholic
beverages, 100% fruit juices and unsweetened
beverages with a dairy base, but it includes sweetened
waters, syrups (to be diluted prior to consumption),
powder-based drinks (including those with a cocoa
basis and to be mixed with a fluid before consumption)
and sweetened fruit juices. Concentrates and products
that require dilution or powder to be mixed with a
fluid will result in the HPL being calculated on the
sugar content of the final product i.e. post dilution
ratio in line with the prescribed dilution criteria.
It is important to note that the sugars subject to the
levy include both added and intrinsic sugars; a
sweetened fruit juice will therefore not only be levied
on the added sugar but also on the sugar contained
naturally within the fruit juice base.
Given the complexity of the composition of most
products subject to HPL, it is essential to obtain
customs tariff determinations from SARS on those
products where a level of uncertainty governs the
decision to include or exclude such products from HPL
items provided for in the Act. Examples of the latter
includes various sweetened dairy products such as
drinking snacks, milk based fruit drinks, energy drinks,
carbonated fruit juices (100% or mixed) and HPL
products with a sugar content of less than 4g/100ml .
Impact on operations
Any person/organisation who manufactures sugary
beverages is obliged to determine if it is regarded as a
non-commercial or a commercial manufacturer, with
reference to their annual consumption of sugar added
to HPL products during the manufacturing process.
Commercial manufacturers (i.e. manufactures of
sugary beverages with a sugar consumption exceeding
500 kilogram per calendar year) must license their
manufacturing premises with SARS as a customs and
excise manufacturing warehouse (“VM”) which will be
subject to the provisions of the Act and permissible
business processes as legislatively prescribed.
The levy is currently recovered at 2.1 cents per gram
of sugar per 100 ml of the sugary beverage. The first 4
grams of sugar per 100 ml is levy free.
For calculation purposes, the HPL legislation requires
that the sugar content of each product be confirmed
by a SANAS / ILAC certified laboratory. However,
subject to the scope and nature of the products
manufactured, these laboratory results could
substantially differ on the same product, resulting in
the need for the recording thereof within a clearly
defined governance protocol to ensure reputational
risks are limited should non-compliance to the Act be
alleged in future SARS audits. To address the latter, it
is advised that an application for the tariff
determinations of HPL products includes the relevant
laboratory results to ensure that SARS agree to the
correctness thereof.

Levy Payments Levy Recovery
A monthly submission per DA179 account must be
submitted to SARS, detailing the sugar volume per HPL
tariff heading of leviable product. The relevant
documents and levy payments must be submitted to
SARS via e-filing.
The levy is paid in the following instances:
 Local production (as set out above);
 Local purchases: The levy is passed through
the supply chain, via a commercial local sales
invoice, from a commercial manufacturer to
the next participant in the value chain; and
 Imported product: The levy is brought to
account at the point of import into South
Africa.
The levy can be recovered by:
 Local sales to customers: The Act, in
conjunction with the SARS communication in
relation to the HPL, requires the levy amount
to be indicated separately on the commercial
sales invoice.
 Export sales: Where product is exported to
any location outside of the South African
borders, the levy can be recovered from SARS,
either via a direct offset on the VM account
(DA179) if exported directly out of the VM or
via a laborious manual administrative process
(DA66 submission) for levy paid exports.
 Off specification: Rebate from SARS should
the product not be fit for local consumption
due to contamination, deterioration or off-
specification.
 Vis major losses: Rebate from SARS should
the product be lost due to a vis-major event.
Accounting approach
Consideration should be given to the most
appropriate accounting treatment of the levy. A
comparison of applied accounting for this type of DAS
taxation would highlight the following two
approaches:
 Income statement approach: Capitalisation to
inventory where eventually the levy will end
up in ‘sales’ and ‘cost of sales’; and
 Balance sheet approach: Capitalisation to levy
control account, where the levy will be
managed in the balance sheet and only
released to the income statement in the
event of non-recovery (e.g. products
distributed for marketing purposes).
Careful consideration (and agreement with external
auditors / outside stakeholders) should be applied to
the selected method, as variances in the application of
the accounting standards are evident between the
different industries where DAS is applied.
Monitoring the levy asset
Irrespective of the preferred accounting treatment,
the manufacturer will, in each case, pay over an
amount of levy to SARS on a monthly basis and
therefore needs to recognise a corresponding asset on
the balance sheet. The levy asset can be recovered
from either local customers (by inclusion in the
commercial sales invoice, as required by law) or from
SARS (for exports from the VM by offsetting on the
DA179 form, or for levy paid exports via a manual
DA66 procedure).
Complexities in monitoring and effectively recovering
the levy asset arise due to the difference in timing and
volume between manufacturing (date of creating the
asset) and the recovery of the levy.
The manufacturer should take cognisance of the
following important HPL specific intricacies:
 The balance sheet levy asset should at all
times be reconcilable to HPL stock on hand
multiplied by the appropriate rate (this
reconciliation will be required to prove

existence, valuation and accuracy for external
audit purposes);
 Transitioning to a HPL tax environment, where
complexities arises due to pre-HPL production
incorrectly recovered via commercial sales
invoices, or post-HPL production not
recovered via commercial sales invoices;
 Complexities introduced through continuous
efforts to reformulate in scope products to
reduce sugar content, ensuring that sugar
content at time of payment to SARS aligns to
recoveries included on invoices;
 Date stamping of production will be of
paramount importance at the time of levy rate
changes. Levy paid stock, accounted for at old
levy rates, exported subsequent to a levy rate
increase must be acquitted at the old rate.
 The manufacturer’s commercial sales invoice
will be utilised for third party export acquittals
from SARS, if variances occur between the levy
paid to SARS (via DA179 submission) and the
recovery information on the commercial
invoice SARS will be out of pocket;
 Margin erosion will occur where payments
made to SARS and recoveries differ. E.g. HPL is
paid over on a certain stock keeping unit
(SKU), but not charged to a particular
customer, due to the HPL exclusive pricing
being applied to a local customer.
Future direction and anomalies
A comparison of the DAS principles applied to various
industries highlights significant anomalies. Some of
these anomalies as they pertain to HPL have an
adverse impact on South African Fast Moving
Consumer Goods (“FMCG”) supply chains and one
would expect future changes to the principles to
accommodate more efficient supply chains and
customs and excise processes:
 In the Petroleum, Alcohol and Tobacco
industries, provision is made for the bonded
movement of manufactured product between
the primary production environment (VM or
VMP) and other primary or secondary
production sites (VM or VMS sites) under the
suspension of duty. As such, movements are
allowed as a bonded movement where the
levy is suspended. This levy suspension is
currently not afforded to HPL registrants, with
the adverse impact of most FMCG companies
not being able to extend the VM registrations
to include a finished product store as current
supply chains are designed to incorporate
significant movements between VMs. A
further unintended consequence of the failure
of SARS to allow for bonded movements from
VM sites is that any subsequent movement
between VMs results in double HPL taxation.
 The concept of an Export Special Storage
Warehouse (SOS) is a well-defined concept in
customs and excise legislation and provided
for in other excise industries. Movements
between the VM and the export SOS are duty
and levy suspended, that results in the
transfer of excise duty or levy liability from
one registrant to another registrant within a
SARS regulated movement regime. Despite
these movements being available for excise
industries such petroleum, alcoholic
beverages and tobacco products, the concept
of a SOS warehouse has not been
incorporated into the HPL legislation, with a
further adverse impact on FMCG companies,
forcing the companies to bring the levy to
account on all non-VM exports and recovering
it via a cumbersome DA66 process.
 Combining the aforementioned omission of
the VM to VM suspension with the omission of
Export SOS suspension leads to most FMCG
companies limiting the VM registration to only
the production facility with no capacity to
store finished stock inside the VM (to
eliminate the double tax when moving stock
between VMs). This form of VM design
eliminates the use of the DA179 offsetting
principle for exports. This is further
exacerbated by the inability to move exports
to a SOS, resulting in all levies paid on exports
being recovered through the DA66 process

(which limits recoveries to 5 documents per
return). The impact is a significant increase in
administrative burden both on SARS and HPL
registrants.
 Current HPL legislation does not provide for
“allowable losses” similar to other industries
governed by the DAS regime. The HPL
legislation rebates will only be allowed for
returns to the VM (of origination) due to:
Contamination, deterioration and off-spec
product. Due to current FMCG supply chain
processes, it is common cause that most
companies are unable to link the HPL return to
the VM of origination and even if possible to
do so, it is not commercially feasible to return
product to the VM of origination.
How can FTI help?
FTI provides the most comprehensive HPL service
offering in South Africa that includes both a legal and
accounting advisory solution.
The legal advisory solution includes policy guidance,
SARS liaison on all customs tariff and levy related
queries, submissions, training and dispute advisory
services.
The accounting advisory offering revolves around a
bespoke industry leading solution that comprises an
excise and levy specific FTI proprietary developed
software database containing all possible inventory
movements provided for under the HPL legislation.
 The database allows us to import and analyse
the client’s actual historical supply chain
movements, providing real data to support
decision making for the most efficient VM
registration applicable to the client’s supply
chain (business case based on actual impact of
registration to the income statement and
working capital requirements);
 Based on knowledge of administering DAS in
various industries we developed a leading two
tiered accounting reconciliation methodology
with the following attributes:
o Monthly reconciliation of the HPL
balance sheet asset to the total
inventory asset (as required for
external audit purposes)
o Detailed monthly matching of every
inventory movement and the
corresponding HPL impact to all levy
payments (local purchases, DA179
SARS payments, Imports) and all levy
recoveries (local commercial sales
invoices, export acquittals via DA179
offsets and DA66 refunds).
The reconciliation methodology allows us to
assist clients by designing the most
appropriate chart of accounts; or provide an
outsourced managed services solution where
we supply accounting journals; provide
DA179/66 information; perform monthly levy
reporting packs (including linking levy to
closing inventory and detailed matching).
Once FTI is satisfied that the levy legislation,
together with the client’s supply chain has
stabilised (indicated by limited number of
monthly unreconciled entries), a Business
Requirement Specification (BRS) is produced
guiding the client to code their in-house ERP
system to effectively manage the HPL
processes.

Christo Roux
Senior Managing Director,
Business Transformation,
South Africa
+27 (0) 82 719 0817
christo.roux@fticonsulting.com
Heine Streicher
Managing Director,
South Africa
+27 (0) 83 269 7449
heine.streicher@fticonsulting.com
Willemien Saunders
Director,
South Africa
+27 (0) 66 478 0770
wilhelmina.saunders@fticonsulting.com
Jotham Barry
Consultant,
South Africa
+27 (0) 66 478 0753
jotham.barry@fticonsulting.com

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