Not for the first time, I received an email from a client whose domestic worker is close to retirement and who is concerned about having “too much money” and that this will impact on her ability to qualify for an old age pension. She has been told (via the grapevine) that when she applies for a pension the government will investigate her personal circumstances and if she is “rich” she will not qualify for a pension. There are...

Was doing provisional tax calculations for a client and was wondering about the effectiveness of her using an RA to reduce her tax liability. She does not belong to a pension fund and all her income is therefore “non-retirement funding”. As such she could put 15% of this into an RA before the end of February. Here are the figures: Taxable income: R250839 Tax on this (after rebates): R44142 If she put 15% of her taxable income...

Living annuities have received a lot of press in the past while and much of it has been critical of the product (sometimes rightly so). The issue has mostly been around the erosion of income because of poor fund selection and an income draw that is too high and thus not sustainable. This has resulted in ASISA producing a revised code for Living Annuities that was introduced in Sep 2010. The intention is noble but in my opinion, the added...

“They prowl the empty streets (at night), waiting in fast cars and on foot”* looking for unsuspecting consumers. Yes, it’s that time of year again when Retirement Annuity salesmen are on out in full force. February is “traditionally” RA month as it signifies the end of the tax year and anyone needing to put money into an RA has until the end of the month to do it. RA’s have received a lot of press (not all of it good) and...

Ok, so almost everyone accepts that a unit trust RA is currently the best retirement annuity available in SA…(for reasons of cost, transparency and most importantly, flexibility). And while government is (apparently) intent on encouraging retirement savings, it seems that they really are only paying lip service to the issue because you can only access a unit trust RA if you are well-heeled. The very people who so...

It is incredible how often the same “issue” or question comes up in quick succession…just this week 2 clients have both asked about cashing in their preservation funds to try to use the funds elsewhere – 1 to invest the funds into her bond and the other to invest the money into a share portfolio. This article will deal with the tax implications of doing this (we will explore the merits of this at a later stage)*. For those that are...