{"id":103593,"date":"2015-11-10T16:05:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T14:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=103593"},"modified":"2015-11-10T16:36:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T14:36:40","slug":"10-things-you-should-know-about-tax-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/103593\/10-things-you-should-know-about-tax-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"10 things you should know about tax in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2015 Tax Statistics bulletin, jointly published by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and Treasury, shows that while there are 16.8 million registered individual taxpayers in South Africa, not all are required to submit returns.<\/p>\n

The number of individuals expected to submit income tax returns increased from 6.1 million in 2011, to 6.6 million in 2014, the report said.<\/p>\n

Tax revenue collected by SARS amounted to R986.3 billion in the year ended March 2015 \u2013 9.6% higher than the previous fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The 2015 Tax Statistics Bulletin provides an overview of tax revenue collection and tax return information for the 2010\/11 to 2014\/15 fiscal years\u201a and the 2011 to 2014 tax years respectively.<\/p>\n

The bulletin showed that there were 4.9 million individuals\u201a working for 429\u201a691 employers\u201a who were assessed who contributed to Personal Income Tax (PIT).<\/p>\n

BusinessTech identified 10 important statistics from the report:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Assessments for 2014 resulted in 67.4%<\/strong> of taxpayers receiving refunds, 19.9%<\/strong> owing SARS after assessment and 12.7%<\/strong> having no liability after assessment;<\/li>\n
  2. The tax-to-GDP<\/strong> ratio increased from 24.9% in 2013\/14 to 25.7 % in 2014\/15\u00a0 exceeding the long-term average of 24%. This is below the peak of 26.4% achieved in 2007\/08;<\/li>\n
  3. There were 2.9 million<\/strong> registered companies<\/strong> (of which about 800,000 submit\u00a0 income tax returns)\u00a0 as at 31 March 2015 and 679,274\u00a0<\/strong> registered VAT\u00a0 vendors of which 420,940<\/strong> (62%)\u00a0 were active;<\/li>\n
  4. SARS assessed 652\u201a847<\/strong> companies. A quarter (26%) had positive taxable income (profit); 45% had taxable income equal to zero and the remaining 29% reported an assessed loss;<\/li>\n
  5. Donations tax is levied at a rate of 20% on the value of the donation. An annual exemption of R100,000 is available to natural persons;<\/li>\n
  6. PIT<\/strong> was the largest source of total revenue collected for 2014\/15 totalling R353.9-billion (35.9%). VAT<\/strong> was the second largest contributor\u201a amassing R261.3-billion (26.5%) and Corporate Income Tax<\/strong> (CIT) was third with R186.6-billion (18.9%);<\/li>\n
  7. 67%<\/strong> of the 2014 assessed individual taxpayers had taxable income below R250,000<\/strong>\u201a earned 31.7% of the total taxable income and contributed 14% of the tax assessed;<\/li>\n
  8. 9.7%<\/strong> of the 2014 taxpayers had taxable income above R500\u201a000<\/strong> and were liable for 57.4%<\/strong> of the tax assessed;<\/li>\n
  9. The value of payments at branch offices<\/strong> reduced from 12.8% in 2010\/11 to only 0.2% in 2014\/15. As much as 73.2%<\/strong> is done via e-filing<\/strong>, with 26.6%<\/strong> done via banks<\/strong>;<\/li>\n
  10. According to SARS, tax relief provided to individuals during the period 2010\/11 to 2014\/15 amounted to R40.7 billion<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    More on tax in SA<\/h3>\n

    Countries where people pay the most tax<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Tax the rich in South Africa: economist<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    More taxes will help fight inequality: economist<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The 2015 Tax Statistics bulletin shows that there are 16.8 million registered individual taxpayers in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":87786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,3796,3246],"class_list":["post-103593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-national-treasury","tag-sars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103593"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103611,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103593\/revisions\/103611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}