Managing your cash flow is fundamental to the success of any business, and a recent Supreme Court of Appeal judgment addresses one particular threat that all taxpayers should heed.

The case concerned a R1.9m tax assessment raised by SARS against a property developer. The question was whether the developer/seller had to declare its income in the tax year in which the sale agreements were signed, or only in the subsequent tax year in which the transfers took place and the sale proceeds paid out. 

In other words did the developer have to pay tax before being paid by the buyers? 

Valuing a business or assets may become necessary or beneficial at any time, but it is particularly important when buying or selling.

So what is valuation all about? Is a valuation worth anything? How do we determine value and is it possible to do so on an objective basis?

Let’s look at how the value of anything is normally determined, and at the difficulty of measuring it in an objective sense both generally and in certain specific circumstances.

Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” and Bitcoin illustrate…

State Capture and the recent high-profile corruption scandals in the private sector are behind the new CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission) “Guideline for the Corporate Compliance Programme”, and we summarise the 7 Compliance Principles that you should incorporate.

With reports that we have lost R700 billion to corruption over the last 20 years, we should all think about what steps we can take to combat this plague which pervades our society and hobbles our economy. 

So even if your company doesn’t fall into one of the categories legally required to set up a Social and Ethics Committee, read on…

New regulations coming into effect on 1 April 2019 will considerably widen the application of VAT to electronic services.

Firstly, the definition of “Electronic Services” has been substantially broadened and we discuss some of the more common types of business which will now fall into the net. We look also at the exclusions and at the position of intermediaries.

Tempting as it may be to procrastinate on this, we end off with the thought that it’s better to take the time now to consider how this will affect your business than to have to negotiate penalties later with SARS.

Provisional taxpayers who use eFiling need to submit their 2017/8 Income Tax Return on or before 31 January 2019.

You will have noticed that being registered for eFiling gives you a much later filing deadline than applies to manual submissions. If you aren’t already registered and would like to be in time for the 2019 tax season, SARS suggests you “Go to SARS eFiling > click Register > follow the 7 easy steps… With Help-You-eFile, help is just a click or a call away. Click the Help-You-eFile icon, accept the term and conditions and select Call Me.  A SARS agent will call you and will help you every step of the way while you’re eFiling…” 

Ask for your accountant’s help in need.