Not only have COVID-19, natural disasters, riots and their repercussions put the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons in the insurance industry, the profession is also in the midst of transitioning to International Financial Reporting Standard 17 (IFRS17), which inevitably comes with tax uncertainty and adoption challenges. BDO’s insurance tax team’s involvement with our various insurance clients, along with our participation in industry initiatives and industry-specific tax contributions, keep us abreast of the current economic, market and regulatory events impacting our insurance clients.

Our insurance tax team has extensive experience in servicing small, medium and large insurers’ tax needs with 17 years of insurance tax advisory and compliance experience at tax partner level.

Some of the current tax challenges facing insurers include:

• Accounting for the tax impact of IFRS17 adoption
• Uncertainty caused by pending legislative amendments required to marry the intended IFRS17 transition impact to tax law
• SARS’ pending digitisation of the long-term insurance tax submission and assessment processes 
• Housing part-risk, part-investment product policies in the correct tax fund
• Understanding the tax treatment of cell-captive and other self-insurance structures and options
• The potential impact of the introduction of Pillar II global minimum tax rules
• Scarcity of available guidance, commentary and training on insurance-specific tax principles. 

We look forward to being part of your insurance journey.