Tax and Remuneration Services for Employers

We provide specialist tax consulting services for employers. This include tax opinions on all South African taxable items to employees, the employer’s employees’ tax compliance thereon, payroll compliance items, tax risk management items and best practices on employee remuneration, where there is complete tax risk free approach to employee remuneration, whilst providing the employee with the best possible salary structuring. Our services also extend to most African countries, especially Southern African locations. Our typical engagements will include the following –

Remuneration Structuring / Salary Structuring / Compensation and Benefit Best Practices

We provide remuneration structuring best practice for around 40 large South African employers. The concept of remuneration structuring has the philosophical base of aligning employee remuneration with personal financial requirements. This is not necessarily tax structuring, albeit that the tax effect is a logical effect of the employee choices made. We provide salary structuring tools for employers and employees, including a web-based or intranet model. This allows the seamless structuring of employee remuneration in a tax compliant manner, which aligns to policies, enables immediate reporting to finance, human resources, employee benefit providers and, most importantly, the actual payroll function. Our model also includes total reward statements. This ensures that employee is fully aware of all components of their remuneration structure, the tax effect of each and how this impacts the employee value proposition.

Travel Allowance / Car Allowance / Company vehicle / Employee Travel Solutions and Best Practice

We have performed analysis and extensive implementation of employer travel solutions. This includes travel allowance and company vehicle review, various employee travel comparison calculation modelling tools, employer risk management sign-offs, fringe benefit tax calculators, employee yearend claim functionality. The recent tax changes to employer provided travel has forced many employers to re-think the tax and cost benefits of employer provided vehicles. The tax treatment of petrol cards, business insurance, travel reimbursements and all similar business travel costs, must all be considered to achieve a tax optimal solution. We also assist with the drafting of travel policies, obtaining of buying-in from the finance and human resource teams into employee travel methodology.

Employee Benefit Review

We provide a critical review of employee benefits and make firm recommendations to unlock value. This includes review of the cost and employee value proposition. Unlike actuaries or benefit providers, which focus on the macro effects of the structures in place, our focus is individual employee centric. This means that we search for the critical value for the employee personally and the value proposition delivered by that employee, taken the costing and tax structure. This includes recommendations on group life cover, disability insurances, retirement structuring, including the impact of the new fiscal rules hereon. We operate under Financial Services Board License, however, our recommendations are aimed at a gap analysis on which benefits can be enhanced and where the employers value proposition is not aligned with market best practice and have not kept up with fiscal changes. The business case is then normally created for revisit to the employee benefit methodology, which, once determined, will impact the exercise to determine what the current providers may do better and the potential value proposition of other providers. We have extensive and recent examples of where considerable saving has been unlocked, despite the assurances of trustees and incumbent advisors that the employee benefits provision is operated optimally.

Tax Gross-up Calculators

We provide various calculators for the business to ensure correct tax gross-up, including on expatriate employees, special purpose incentive schemes which are delivered net of tax, long service payment gross-up calculators, where long service is not aligned with the tax exemptions and any other employee tax calculator. These calculators protect employee take-home pay, achieves equitability amongst employees, ensures attraction and retention of employees and provides full tax risk management and an audit trial for compliance purposes.