The short answer is yes. A recent Supreme Court of Appeal ruling has confirmed that your accountant in the Tax Court is now a valid alternative to briefing an attorney or advocate. Your accountant, your tax practitioner, or any other duly authorised person can stand up for you when you take on SARS.
For many of the business owners and individuals who work with us at PATC, this changes the maths on whether it is worth fighting a SARS dispute at all. The cost of running an appeal through a law firm has, for some time, been beyond the reach of the very taxpayers most likely to find themselves on the receiving end of an aggressive assessment. This ruling opens a door that SARS had been trying to keep closed.
What the court decided
In a judgment handed down on 12 May 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of a taxpayer whose father, acting under a power of attorney, had been blocked from representing her in the Tax Court because he was not an admitted attorney or advocate. SARS argued that only legal practitioners could appear in the Tax Court. The SCA disagreed and confirmed that a duly authorised non-legal representative may stand in for a taxpayer.
The full legal reasoning is detailed and worth reading if you are interested. The clearest write-ups are at Tax Consulting South Africa and BusinessTech. Moneyweb also covers the back story, which stretches over more than a decade.
What having your accountant in the Tax Court means for you
If you are in dispute with SARS, or thinking about objecting to an assessment, you now have a wider choice of who can represent you. Your accountant or tax practitioner, the person who knows your numbers and the history of your file, can take the matter forward without a lawyer being parachuted in. For most of the smaller and mid-sized matters we see at PATC, that adviser is usually the right person for the job anyway.
This matters because tax disputes have become more frequent and more aggressive. SARS has been increasingly willing to litigate on technical and procedural points. Until this ruling, one of those technical points was simply whether your representative had the right qualification to be in the room. The SCA has now taken that argument off the table.
What it does not change
A few things are worth being honest about.
This ruling clarifies who may represent you. It does not make tax litigation any simpler or any less risky. SARS continues to brief senior counsel and continues to litigate hard. Procedural missteps in a dispute can have lasting financial consequences, and taxpayers are generally bound by the grounds raised in their original objection and appeal. The right representative for your dispute is the one with relevant experience and a clear grasp of the rules. For many of our clients, that is the PATC team. For some matters, a specialist tax attorney will still be the right call. This ruling widens your options. It does not remove the need to choose carefully.
It is also worth noting that SARS may still take the matter on appeal to the Constitutional Court. If that happens and the Constitutional Court overturns or varies the ruling, the position would change. For now, however, the SCA’s judgment stands and may be relied on.
How PATC can help with your accountant in the Tax Court
If you have an active dispute with SARS, an assessment you disagree with, or a SARS audit that has unsettled you, this is a good moment to talk through your options. The recent ruling may have changed what is available to you.
PATC offers a complimentary 1 hour discovery call to discuss your situation, understand the history of your matter, and outline a sensible path forward. T’s and C’s apply.
To book, contact us on 031 702 8112 or info@patc.co.za, or visit www.patc.co.za.
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Further reading
With thanks to Nicholas Arumugam of PATC for circulating the judgment and the analysis underpinning this article. The case is Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service v Poulter (1110/2024) [2026] ZASCA 68.
