I could not help but think that the announcement in the budget speech about the proposed changes to retirement funding seem to remind me of the mythical animal. On the one head we have South Africans massively under saving (for retirement) and a struggling local economy while on the other head we have Treasury apparently keen to encourage (retirement) saving but at the same time limiting the amount that people can save (for retirement).

In his speech, Pravin Gordhan made the proposal to increase the percentage that South Africans can contribute to their retirement savings (via pension and provident funds and RA’s). This is all good but he then went to put limits on the maximum contributions. It is proposed that from March 2014, individuals under 45 will be able to contribute 22.5% to their retirement funds while those over 45 will be able to contribute 27.5% to their funds. But, there will be a maximum contribution amount of R250000 and R300000 respectively. Anyone earning more than R1.1 million per annum will, in future, not be able to take full advantage of the tax saving currently available to them via their retirement funds. Any additional money that they want to save for retirement will either have to be invested elsewhere or could be put into the retirement fund but wait until retirement for the tax benefit.

There will also be a minimum contribution of R20000 per year to allow low income earners to contribute in excess of the maximum percentages.

In addition to these changes he also proposed introducing a tax friendly savings vehicle (similar to ISA’s in the UK?). It is proposed that these investments will replace the current interest free-exemption limits with individuals being allowed to contribute up to R30000 pa but with a life-time maximum of R500000 “to ensure that high net-worth individuals do not benefit disproportionately”.

So what I hear you say, anyone earning more than R1.1 million probably does not really need the tax breaks as much as the poor do. What is the obsession with penalising the rich?

There are currently very few (rich) people carrying the tax burden in SA and if you kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs then you wont have the funds to pay for the poor.

Has no one told the minister that any money that is invested in retirement funds is invested in SA and working for and in the SA economy but that money (of the rich) that is not in retirement funds is probably offshore working in some other countries economy? Money that cant be invested into retirement funds has the potential to leave SA (and never come back) and surely that is not what they should be trying to encourage?

We need people to invest in South Africa, not offshore and by capping the contributions to retirement funds you are effectively limiting the amount of money that (the rich) people can invest in South Africa. One body, two heads and each one pulling in different directions – we’re going to end up going nowhere!

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1. Is there still a case for RA’s?
2. Something’s gotta give and it’s not government
3. Money or the box?

So when a friend of mine was recently advised to cancel cover with one company in favour of another there was nothing “unusual” about that. Except in this case, he had been advised to cancel a policy with no exclusions on it in favour of the new one which had exclusions on it. When I pointed out the foolishness of this decision he told me that the only reason he had done it was because he had left his retirement saving a bit late and the new insurance policy was promising him a very healthy pay out at 65 (if he paid his premiums for that long) and this would go a long way to solving his slow start at retirement planning.

He did admit that he did not fully understand the product and that it did possibly sound too good to be true. And so in an effort to help him to understand what he was buying, I sat through two sales pitches from 2 of the company’s sales agents. They were really slick and very impressive.

I understand the intention behind the product – people are changing life cover every few years so let’s see if we can find a way to tie them in for longer (or for life). To do this, let’s offer them an amazing pay out at 65 and then offer them the ability to keep an amount of life cover for which they no longer need to pay. Although if everyone who signed up did this, the scheme would clearly not work and so the company is apparently counting on 97.5% of people cancelling their cover before they turn 65 so that the 2.5% who don’t cancel their cover can benefit.

I admit that I don’t fully understand the product (I suspect that there are actually few who fully do) but from what I can see there are at least the following assumptions that need to be met in order for it all to work:

• You need to stay with the cover for the entire term – in my mate’s case that is 23 years (remember the average policy stays in force for less than 7 years).
• If you do, then you are one of the 2.5% who will benefit (they hope that 97.5% won’t stick with the cover).
• There is no guarantee on premium increases except for the first 10 years when it will be CPI + some (age related) factor. After the first 10 years it could go up by as much as 25% and I suspect that if more than 2.5% keep their cover in force then the increases could be substantial.
• You have to maintain the top tier status of their reward program in order for this to work. The reward program is enhanced by a healthy life style and shopping spend – you need to spend more than R9000 pm on the credit card and need to shop at the “preferred” suppliers to really benefit.
• Apart from ad-hoc paybacks every 5 years (which are all somehow linked to your premium and reward status) if you leave before the end then you leave with nothing.

So what if you get to 55 only to find that you have a potential massive lump sum “invested” in this policy but, because of factors out of your control, you can no longer afford the premium? You could face a situation where you no longer need the cover or worse, can no longer afford the premiums and you would walk away with nothing. And what happens when a competitor company comes along with the “next best thing” which really is cheaper than the current policy and I am stuck with this one?

In my friend’s case, this new policy was about R5000 more expensive than similar cover through a competitor company…but as I understood the product, the idea behind this was that they were going to take some of the extra R5000 and invest it into something that would effectively pay out part of the total amount available to him at 65. Under the above assumptions, however, if he leaves before then, he would get very little (if anything) back!

If this were my policy I would rather take cheaper, simpler (and more transparent) cover elsewhere and then invest the difference (of the premium) into a (unit trust based) retirement annuity (if it makes tax sense) or else into some UT/ETF’s. That way I get the full benefit of what is invested – it is all mine! I get life cover that I need, an investment that is all mine and at any stage in the future if I need to change either my cover or my RA there is no penalty to me.

I am free to leave/alter either at any stage without it affecting the other. I am free to come and go as I please and shop where I want. Now that sounds a lot less like a cult to me

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The letters behind her name are an explicit indication that she has put in the hours to obtain her professional qualification, does the required continuing education and is therefore suitably qualified to do her job. And yet each time we, as Certified Financial Planners®, see a new client we are obliged by law, to go through just such a document. Why? Because unfortunately, just about anyone acting in an advisory role in this country is able to refer to themselves as a financial planner. While the CFP® designation is internationally recognised as the pinnacle qualification for financial planning, in South Africa, it is not a pre-requisite for you to be referred to as a financial planner. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can refer to themselves as a financial planner and as a result I need to go through the disclosure document with each new client. And each time I am reminded that we are not regarded as professionals and I lament the opportunities that the FSB (and some industry bodies) missed to really clean up the industry.

Traditionally, the blame (for poor ethics and standards) appears to have been laid almost solely at the door of the financial advisors who have been “fleecing” the unsuspecting consumers. It is my opinion that the companies that have been marketing and accepting the business also played a significant role in the “fleecing” and the resulting need for all the current industry legislation. The companies argued that it was not their responsibility to “police” the industry and that they should not have been performing the legislators function. They do, however, in my opinion have an inalienable moral and legal responsibility not accept business from D.Odgy Brokers Ltd or to offer products and solutions which essentially constitute bad practices.

Sadly, the structure of most of the financial service providers is such that they are fundamentally dependent on new sales in order to grow their business and as a result it often appears that it has been business at any cost. There is a perception that because of this pressure to generate profit that if Company A won’t accept the business then Company B or C will, so Company A will take it (this time) even if it is “bad business”. Not only should they be held responsible for accepting “dodgy” business, but I think that companies should also be held responsible for the products they have brought (and bring) to the market – many of which have often been within the letter but not the spirit of the law. This has often resulted in the (ad-hoc) intervention by the financial authorities (remember the “black hole” policies to name one).

So in 2004 we saw the introduction of the FAIS Act (Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act) which was supposed to deal with all the bad advice that consumers have been subjected to over the years. My response to FAIS has been twofold. Firstly, the introduction of legislation does not (and never will) change the seriousness of what we do – clients don’t get a second chance to retire or become disabled – what we do has always been very serious business and should be done correctly first time around (with or without legislation). FAIS does not change that but it does, however, now bring a (financial) consequence for poor or inappropriate advice, and this is good. My second response is a bit more cynical. To me, FAIS is like putting a bucket under a leaky tap. You don’t do that, you fix the tap.

To expand on the analogy, I think we all accept that there has been a “leak” in the financial advice arena and consumers are the ones that have paid the price. However, the legislation appears to be largely targeted at advisors (and there are apparently more than 100000 of us in SA) when it could have been far simpler to fix the tap by targeting (far fewer) financial service companies. Without a steady supply of product, sales people (brokers) have nothing to sell so by regulating what companies can market (and who they can use to market), it would have been far simpler and quicker to clean up the industry.

But for some reason, the FSB decided to legislate 100000 individuals when they could have more effectively legislated a couple of hundred companies who already had compliance departments in place. Imagine if they had said to a company like Old Mutual – “you are responsible for the products you offer and the business you accept – if it does not comply with the legislation, we will suspend your license to do business”. I am pretty sure that they would have cleaned up their act very quickly and this would probably also have resulted in a more honest and professional industry much more quickly.

At the same time, the FSB could have insisted that only someone with the CFP® designation could be referred to as a Financial Planner – this would have also gone a long way to creating a profession and clearing up the confusion around financial planning and would have also encouraged many more advisors to aim for the CFP® mark. It would probably also have meant that we would not need to go through a disclosure document each time we see a new client – the profession and letters behind our names would say it all!

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While some planners and advisors have already seen the light and have started preparing for the “inevitable” transition there are plenty of advisors, industry representatives and commentators who believe that it will “never happen in SA” or that it will “kill the industry” and that “planners will not be able to make a decent living”. And the biggest objection seems to be that people cant afford to pay for financial advice.

“Rubbish” I say, to all of the above! Simplistically, there seem to be 2 major areas of objection and resistance to the fee-only model. Firstly, that consumers cant (or wont) pay for advice and secondly, that as a result of the first objection, advisors wont be able to survive.

While it is true that some consumers might not be able to afford to pay the fees that advisors are currently used to, we need to remember that it is not only the wealthy people who visit (and pay) their doctors/dentists/accountants/lawyers/other professional. In fact, just about every professional service is paid for directly by the person making use of the service. I suspect, however, that one of the major reasons that advisors believe that they wont be able to survive is that most advisors don’t have their own financial planning affairs in order.

If this seems unlikely or unbelievable then consider the issue of “cash flow”, the foundation of good financial planning. It is common sense that income needs to exceed expenses or else you will end up in debt and yet stories persist of how many of the insurance companies encourage new agents to buy a new car or to make some other major purchase when they sign up. The rationale behind this is that the debt that they have just taken on will keep them “hungry” and focussed for sales.

While this might well be the stuff of urban legend the lack of attention to cash flow seems to continue when advisors leave the insurers to set up their own independent businesses. Speak to just about any broker consultant and he/she will readily recount plenty of stories of advisors who submit business with one hand and demand their commission payments with the other. If we are in the business of financial planning and advice and we are advising our clients to “get their cash flow under control” then surely we should be doing the same? If we are so dependent on a commission cheque to make it through the day/week/month then I suspect that we have no idea about budgeting or cash flow control and that perhaps we need to spend some time taking our own medicine in this regard.

I advocate that before anyone takes advice from a financial planner that they ask them a few questions about their own financial planning affairs. Questions like:

• Do you have a budget?
• Do you have any debt and if so, when will you be debt free?
• Do you have any life/disability/dread-disease cover?
• Do you have retirement annuities and investments?
• Do you have a will (and is it current)?

The answers to the above will reveal a lot about the financial planners own affairs – I certainly would not be taking advice from someone who does not have his/her own financial planning affairs in order. If only we spent a bit of time on our own financial planning, budgeting and cash flow management then perhaps we would not be so desperate to sell products and then we could focus on financial planning (which would be a major threat to the product providers – but that is the subject of another debate).

Back to the fee model: if my cash flow is under control then I can afford to allow people to pay my fee (for the service provided) over a few months if necessary (as opposed to in one go). I also have the ability and discretion to reduce the fee where necessary and this then makes fee-only advice accessible to just about everyone!

As for the objection that advisors wont be able to make a decent living from fee-only financial planning, I guess that decent is all relative. But if we consider that there are around 7 working hours each day, and if we assume that we work 5 days per week for 46 weeks each year, that would be 1610 hours worked. At a rate of R750/hour then the final income would be around R1.2million! I think that is decent in just about anyone’s definition.

I realise that this is simplistic and is also not “popular” and that there will have to be a major mind-set change (from advisors and consumers) before fee-based or fee only financial planning takes hold, but having done it this way for the past 8.5 years I know that it is entirely possible to survive and also to make a decent living from this model – the biggest challenge now is how to cope with the demand for the service we offer.

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2. The Financial Planning Profession
3. Financial Planning for Dummies – Part 1

The legislation has now put a complete stop to all of this (for independent advisors at least) with companies now only being allowed to spend a maximum of R1000 per advisor per calendar year on things like entertainment. While I am in favour of the legislation (in principle) I think that there are far easier ways to go about regulating what companies spend on advisors than the rather excessive record keeping requirements that are currently required. It would have been far easier for companies to be required to keep and publish (online) a record of all that they spend on each advisor. When a client consults with an advisor and suspects that the advice might be “tainted” because of incentives that have been offered or paid, all that he or she would need to do would be to visit the online register of that company to establish exactly what the company has spent on that advisor and thereby establishing just how independent his or her advice actually is. But no, we have once again followed international so-called “best practice” and now we sit with these ridiculous registers and have also destroyed a big section of the hospitality/team-building industry in the process (it is illegal for a company to pay for conferences or similar events). Why cant we lead for a change?

The act requires me to declare something along the following lines to my clients:

I have no conflict of interest with regard to:

• any financial interest;
• any ownership interests, or
• any relationship with a third party

That might, in rendering a financial service to a client:

• influence the objective performance of my obligations to my clients; or
• prevent me from providing an unbiased and fair financial service in the interest of my clients.

On the surface this seems pretty simple and obvious but there is also another side to the conflicts of interest nonsense which pretty much makes it impossible for anyone to honestly declare the above.

There are many examples where there are blatant conflicts of interest that are not covered or envisaged by the legislation. For example – there are some companies that still offer both unit trust RA’s as well as the older (traditional) life insurance RA’s. It is widely accepted that these are inferior products and yet they are still the most frequently sold. Why? Because the commission structure is much higher on them than on the unit trust RA’s. Don’t blame advisors for this, they did not create these products – the FSB set the commission limits and it is the companies that developed and still offer the (inferior) RA’s. Surely that is a blatant conflict of interest? And yet it is not addressed by legislation. Why not?

Or consider the following example. Many of the companies require minimum volumes of business before they will grant contracts to advisors. In some cases they even cancel advisors’ contracts for not producing sufficient new business for them. They force advisors to commit to writing Rx worth of business each year else they face the threat of their contract being cancelled by the company. For many advisors, the loss of the contract will materially affect their cash-flow as well as their ability to service existing clients and so they are “forced” to keep writing new business. Or worse still – our company has more than R130million worth of investments with one of the LISP companies and they refuse to give us a consultant to service our business. Despite the fact that they earn around R700000 in admin fees each year from our clients, they are not prepared to service this – they are only interested in new business. Because we wont guarantee them a specified amount of new business each year we are not serviced by them – we are consigned to the totally inefficient and impersonal call centre. How can I possibly make the declaration above under these conditions?

If we never write new business again we will be fine – we are in the service business and actively look after our existing clients and yet the financial service companies all constantly need new business to survive – now that’s the biggest conflict of interest of all! And the legislation is mum on this!

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As a concept, retirement is a relatively new thing. Its roots can be traced to Otto von Bismarck and Germany in the late 1800’s where he introduced a disability insurance programme for anyone over the age of 70 (there were not many) and in reality it was just an attempt by him to retain the loyalty of the workforce. The first private pension fund was introduced around the same time by American Express in the US and shortly after this the first union pension fund was introduced. The uptake was initially slow but from 1910-1920 as favourable tax regimes were introduced the number of funds quickly grew to more than 200. By 1932 about 15% of the US workforce was covered.

Then came the “great” depression and in 1933 with 25% of the US population unemployed, 50% of the elderly living in poverty (many of the private pension funds collapsed) there was a growing call for the elderly to demand pensions from the government. They (the government) quickly responded and in a move that was mostly an attempt to maintain political power and control, FD Roosevelt and the new Dealers introduced the concept of enforced retirement. This was largely in an attempt to get rid of an ageing workforce and in doing so to make way for the young unemployed masses, thereby getting them off the streets and stop them from rioting as they had done in Germany and elsewhere. The plan to fund this was simple: get the younger members working and then use their taxes to fund the pensions of the older retired workers.

All that needed to be decided was the age of retirement. There were global precedents ranging from 60 to 70 (as well as the biblical notion of “three score and ten”). When they initially agreed on the age of 65, life expectancy in the US was around 63. In the 1930’s, if you reached 65 you were considered really old – kind of like today’s 95+ brigade. In reality, most people were set to die before they retired and the age was quickly reduced to 62 years. So, in theory at least, you retired at 62 and then spent a year in retirement getting your affairs in order before you then “checked out” for the last time.

Today, especially with the advancement of modern medicine, it is not uncommon to find people spending more years in retirement than they did working. Someone who retires today at 55 has saved for 35 years (max) and then possibly needs to fund the next 35-40 years from this saving. No wonder 9 out of 10 people will not be able to retire financially independent! It is not only that they have not saved enough but also that retirement was never meant to be that long. The odds are fully against us – how can you fund 30+ years (with all those deferred goals and with rapidly increasing medical costs) when you only have 30-40 years to save for it? Nope, I think we have it wrong and so do a growing number of well-respected financial planners.

But let’s go back to the early 1900’s for a bit. At that time there was a widely held view that the aged could add little value to society – part of this perception can be attributed to William Osler (so called father of modern medicine) who in his famous “fixed term” speech in 1905 stated that anyone over the age of 40 should be retired and that men older than 60 should be cholorformed. “Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature – subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasurers, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today. . . The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.”

While his speech may have been partially tongue-in-cheek (he was 60 at the time) there was a growing perception that older people could no longer add value to society. Fortunately we (mostly) no longer think this and there are a growing number of older professionals still (happily) working – like the 87 year old doctor I met who was still studying (much to his son’s distress because he thought his dad should have retired already).

Life’s about balance they say and traditionally this has been about being a loyal and hard-working employee in order to earn money that you might be able to enjoy later. We’ve been encouraged to save our money and defer our dreams until one day when we have the time and money to do them. The “New Retirementality”* is shunning this idea and is opting to play now and then work longer. You might never get to retirement and if you do, you might not have your health or partner to enjoy it so let’s rather enjoy our money now (within reason) and work longer. The benefits are many-fold, here are just two:

1. We get to do the things we want to while we still can and with the people we love, and

2. It takes away the pressure to have a massive retirement pot to fund the unproductive years – with the power of compounding an extra 5 or 10 years of saving makes a substantial difference to the size of the pot eventually available.

People are also starting to realise that retirement is not just a financial event – rather it is a life event and if not dealt with on this basis it could have significant and far-reaching consequences. It is not uncommon to hear of people dying soon after retirement or even to find that many relationships come to an end as well. A person’s sense of self-worth quickly declines when there is no longer a purpose/reason to live. A decline in health and relationship stress often go hand in hand with this loss of purpose too.

So let’s accept that most of us wont be able to stop working at 65 and make peace with the fact that we will work longer…just make sure that if that’s the case that you enjoy doing what you do. If not, then find something that you love doing and that you can do for longer. Just make sure that you take time before then to stop and smell the roses along the way.

Retirementality* – this is taken from Mitch Anthony’s excellent book called the “New Retirementality”

This article was first published in Finweek – 25th Nov 2011

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This artcile was published in Finweek 11 November 2011

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When I first viewed the clip it had around 16000 hits and I have just received it again (from another client) and it now has almost 2.1million hits. While there may be some truth to what he is saying, this is also a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in that people listen to it, panic and then sell. Which results in more people panicking and selling and this then leads to wholesale panic and market meltdown. At least he was honest and admitted that if the market collapsed he stood to make money from it – so he clearly has a vested interest to see it fall (and will possibly go bankrupt if it does not).

As I reflect on this there are at least 2 things that come to mind.

1. There are many people currently predicting the imminent collapse. I was at a presentation recently where the presenter joked about this and made the comment that the markets had correctly predicted 9 of the last 3 recessions/crashes. Remember Fred Crookes who quite a few years back persistently predicted a major crash on the JSE – after getting it wrong so many times he finally got one right and the market did fall. I guess that if you predict something often enough it is bound to eventually happen. Bottom line is that no one knows where the market is headed – if they did they would not be talking about it they would be retired – but interviews like this make for “good viewing ratings”.

2. I also remember reading the following quote a few years ago “One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.” This was by a chap called William Feather and what people fail to realise is that in order for shares to trade you have to have both sellers and buyers. So when the market falls and people are selling off massively, remember that for every seller there has to be a buyer! And this is where the real money is made – that’s how well known investors like Warren Buffett have made their money – they buy when everyone else is selling.

A third thing to remember is that when you invest money, you are doing it for the long term. Guys like Alessio are traders – they have no interest in the long term – they hope to make money from short term price fluctuations (which are often a result of irrational and emotional decisions made by so-called long term investors). I think Warren Buffett sums it up well when he says “I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.” If you cant do that then perhaps you should not be investing your money – there are other options that you should be exploring.

The other options include things like asset allocation and target return funds where the equity exposure is limited and the fund manager makes use of the other asset classes such as bonds, cash and property as well. The aim of these funds is typically to preserve capital over all 12 month periods and to produce real returns of 3-5% over rolling 3 year periods as well. There are some really good managers in this space and many of them have in fact outperformed the ALSI over the last 3-5 years!

This article first appeared in Finweek 21st October 2011

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I was asked if I would comment on this and a few questions around insurance and its importance were posed to me. I duly answered them and they ran the story with the sound bites. But later that afternoon while I was out running I was reflecting on the story and suddenly thought to myself that they were the correct answers to the journalist’s questions but the problem was that they were the incorrect questions (and assumptions).

The problem is that if you are retrenched or fall on hard times suddenly, insurance won’t help you out…apart from not really being able to insure against retrenchment, if you are retrenched you will also not be able to afford your insurance premiums if your cash-flow is up the creek and the policies will lapse and be worthless.

On reflection, I think that the “secret” to insuring against this scenario is maintaining a positive cash-flow and having an emergency fund.

As long as you spend more than you earn and increase your debt levels as a result, you are just one (maybe 2) pay checks from ending up on the streets. The reason that the global financial system is in the current mess that it is in is because of too much debt. We have been living one pay check away from bankruptcy for too long. Countries (people) have borrowed more money than they can now afford to repay and they are going to default. And people are going to end up on the streets.

One of the pillars of good financial planning is to have funds for an emergency. One of the major financial risks that we all face is having funds for that inevitable crisis – whether this is a burst geyser, a new gear box for the car, root canal surgery that the medical aid won’t cover or even retrenchment!

The problem though is that most of us are paying off debt. As a result, cash flow is completely out of control – we can’t even make ends meet on a monthly basis and there is no way we have any surplus to put into an emergency fund. My advice is to go back to basics – revisit your budget and see where you are spending your money and how you can cut down your expenses. Start with something like bank fees – even R50/month is R600/year that you could save. Don’t underestimate the importance of a budget and positive cash flow when it comes to financial planning!

The Emergency Fund: the theory is that you should aim to accumulate sufficient funds in an emergency fund to cover 6 months’ worth of income needs. This is the ideal and if you are paying off a bond or debt you probably don’t want this amount of cash sitting in an account earning (significantly) less interest than the debt is costing you. In this instance you would either have less in the emergency fund or if you have an access facility on your bond, use that.

Why 6 months and is that not too much? Yes, you could probably get away with less than that and even 1 month would be better than nothing. But imagine if you were retrenched suddenly – how would you feel knowing that you had sufficient cash to cover your living expenses for the next 6 months? Now that’s the kind of insurance you should be putting in place to keep you from ending up on the streets!

This article appeared in Finweek 28th Oct 2011

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On the face of it, exchange control legislation has all but fallen away with the announcement by National Treasury that individual investors can take R4million offshore each year. But it seems that someone at Treasury forgot to tell SARS that it is ok for people to take money offshore.

In my experience, it is just about impossible to get a tax clearance from SARS at the moment. The number of hoops that need to be jumped through seem to change quite regularly, they lose the application form, they have different “standard” processing times and then tend to decline the certificate on minor technicalities (it seems that at this stage SARS require a prospective investor to have the amount they intend investing actually sitting in their bank account).

So while exchange controls might officially have been relaxed by National Treasury it seems that another government department is making it almost impossible to get official permission to take the money offshore. The result of this is that people will eventually give up on the the “right thing” and will find other ways to take money offshore again. But is that not the reason we needed a whole big amnesty a while back?

Surely someone at Treasury needs to speak to someone at SARS and find out why they are being so difficult with the tax clearance process? The result of SARS’ approach will be increased non-compliance in the future (especially if we see the rand weaken again suddenly).

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