David French Recent efforts to right the country’s listing economy were praised from all quarters at the recent South Africa-French Business Forum, attended by a delegation of French government officials and companies who are in the country to bolster bilateral ties. According to tax consulting director at Mazars , David French, these signals are significant at a time that South Africa is trying its utmost to win back the confidence of international investors. Commenting during a panel discussion on what the country needs to do to achieve this, French said that despite the positive sentiment at the forum, a near-disaster has been averted following the collapse of governance at SA Revenue Service (SARS). Having had first-hand experience of that decline, while working in the tax authority’s Tax Avoidance and Reportable Arrangement unit until recently, French says that fortunately, the decline was caught just in time. The extent of the decline at SARS is currently being uncovered ...

Steven Nathan From 1 March 2016, a number of retirement and tax reforms introduced by National Treasury will take effect. Designed to create a simpler and uniform retirement savings regime, Steven Nathan, CEO of 10X Investments says that the value and purpose of these new laws has not been clearly communicated to the public. Nathan believes this lack of clarity that caused wide spread misperceptions around retirement reforms. Ultimately, it forced Government to postpone the compulsory annuitisation of provident funds at retirement for another two years. “If we don’t tackle these issues now, we’ll be sitting in the same predicament in 2018. It’s important to immediately clarify some of the burning issues related to vested rights, tax deductions on contributions, as well the ability of members to access their fund benefits on resignation or dismissal,” says Nathan. Uniform tax deductions across all types of retirement funds Presently, there are different tax deduction limits on co...

Elize Giese As SMEs reflect on the National Budget Speech, the focus should now be on implementing long term strategies to deal with challenges imposed by the ever-changing business environment. Elize Giese, Head of Investments for FNB Business, says given the current economic landscape, SMEs should constantly look for ways to reduce operating costs and use the savings to cater for unforeseen business expenses and emergencies. One way that SMEs can cut costs is through tax competence.  Although the National Budget Speech did not provide tax relief for small businesses, entrepreneurs can save or manage costs by improving efficiencies. Giese shares a few guidelines for small businesses:   Constantly track business expenses – small businesses should keep record of all expenses regardless of their value. SARS provides deductions for a range of business expenses such as entertainment, travelling, gifts for clients and common office expenses, amongst others. ...

BY CAMILIA DU PLOOY It is that time of the year again, the start of a new tax season and time to start getting your documents together and also planning for the next financial year. To most of us, this topic is somewhat confusing; completely intimidating and downright not interesting at all … but did you know about all the benefits there are for owning a property and how greatly it could influence your tax deductions in a positive way? Unfortunately paying a bond on one property, proclaiming it to be your main residence and not owning any other property or earning any additional income from your home, means that you will not necessarily benefit from any tax exemption or cash flow gains from personal income tax claiming every year end. While still inhabiting and paying off the bond, there is nothing much to get excited about until you decide to upgrade or downgrade your permanent residence by means of selling.   If the property is registered in an individual's na...

PaySpace, leaders in true cloud based Payroll & Human Capital Management (HCM)/HR software solutions announced that it has successfully rolled out the most recent detailed tax information for 2016 financial year relating to seven African countries, have been released across the PaySpace platform. Clients that have entities in these countries received comprehensive information pertaining to all of the changes. Changes in these countries came in to effect from 1 December 2015 and through PaySpace’s real-time, multi-tenant environment, was updated instantly including details on tax tables that are already reflecting across all relevant PaySpace profiles – all of which are 100% compliant with each country’s legislative tax infrastructure.  “Being able to deliver prompt system rollout is imperative for any true cloud based service offering,” says George Karageorgiades, Head of Payroll and Compliance for PaySpace. “Delivering this sort of information - which has direct and im...

The indirect effect of Budget 2015 on SMEs Petra Rees South Africa’s tax plans for the next three years have just been announced by Nhlanhla Nene, the country’s finance minister. The Budget 2015 will directly impact small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but there are also indirect effects – such as the weakening Rand and power shortages – that are just as significant. The growth rate in South Africa is expected to be around 2,5% this year, although the National Treasury has just revised this figure to 2%. The deficit must be kept under 3% of the GDP, which explains the government spending, tax and borrowing plans announced in the Budget 2015.  “Government spending is very high on the agenda and must be tightly controlled in order to reach those targets. If the government doesn’t succeed, South Africa will be downgraded to a junk status by the rating agencies. A further downgrade would put the Rand under severe pressure which would have a ripple effect on the whole e...

The impact of Budget 2015 on SMEs Petra Rees At the end of February Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene announced the tax plans for the next three years as part of the national budget, and in it he showed his support for the smallest enterprises in South Africa, by giving tax relief to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).  Micro businesses with a turnover under R335 000 will not pay tax, previously this threshold was R150 000. This news has the backing of small business owners, who will now have extra money to support their growth. “We work with a lot of start-ups in our incubation programmes and this is a fantastic way of getting entrepreneurs thinking of starting a new venture. We really welcome this move by the government,” says Petra Rees from Lean Enterprise Acceleration Programmes (LEAP), a subsidiary of PLP Group.  The biggest challenge facing SMEs will come in the form of indirect taxes, as the fuel levy and road accident fund levy are both set to increase from t...