The exact facts, the company receives the discretionary grant from SETA for Employing employees that meets the requirements of ETI . Is the company still eligible to claim the ETI allowance from SARS? if the company hasn't claimed in the past three years
Important:
This answer is based on tax law year ending 28 February 2018.
Answer:
The employment tax incentive itself qualifies for an exemption under section 10(1)(s) of the Income Tax Act. It is not seen as a government grant – section 12P. It doesn’t reduce the employee remuneration or deductions, for tax purposes, available to the employer. We found nothing in the Act that provides that an employer is not entitled to the incentive if the employer receives other grants. The legislation should specifically provide for such an exclusion if it was intended.
The law also doesn’t provide for the entitlement to the incentive to be lost if the claim wasn’t made before a specific date. You can confirm this with SARS or National Treasury as both will respond to queries about the incentive.