The Treasury department has been encouraging individuals to save more for several years and is following up on this by launching tax free savings accounts (TFSAs) on 1 March this year.

Certain Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises were given until the end of 2015 to submit a PAIA manual in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act. This is a reminder not to forget to submit the manual to the South African Human Rights Commission. As this is a relatively simple process, there is a small cost of compliance for business.

There has been a considerable media spotlight on government’s intention to reform retirement funding. This has now been postponed as there is no agreement on proposals.  

It is worth taking advice on maximising your contributions in the meantime. The thrust of government’s approach is to limit the taxable amount of contributions that can be made to retirement funding which will effectively penalise high net worth individuals.

We have warned before on the continuing rise in cyber crime (see for example November 2014’s CA(SA)DotNews) and it is now taking on a particularly sinister turn. Recent media reports refer to organised crime syndicates hijacking companies’ databases and demanding ransom for the return of the database. This happened for example at Target, one of the United States’ largest retailers, last year. 

Experts have no doubt that this has already begun happening in South Africa, so be proactive and ensure your systems are as robust as possible.