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Tax filing season starts on 1st July. A quick reminder to those individuals who have been mainly working from home this last year..

If you want to claim “home office” expenses:

• An office, appropriately equipped, must have been set up at the place of primary residence;
• The office must have been used regularly and exclusively for work purposes;
• The office must have been used for more than 50% of the employee’s duties or, if the employee earns more than 50% of their remuneration from commission or other variable payments based on work performance, more than 50% of the employee’s duties must have been performed away from the employer’s office;
• Any home office expenses must be linked to employment use and must be verifiable; and
• Home office expenses must be claimed against source code 4028 in the income tax return.

Once you formally designate a portion of your property as an office and start claiming “home office” expenses, it will adversely impact the tax exclusions when/if you sell the property.

There is a high likelihood that a taxpayer who claims home office expenses for the first time will be selected for verification or audit – so be prepared. Have all the documentation in order.

Typical expenses that may be deductible for home office include:

• bond interest (ONLY up to 2022 tax year)
• rent of the premises;
• cost of repairs to the premises; and
• expenses in connection with the premises, which could include:
  • rates and taxes;
  • cleaning costs; and
  • electricity.

Other typical expenditure that may qualify for a separate deduction in respect of maintaining a home office, include:

• general wear and tear on items used for trade purposes in the office;
• office equipment, furniture and fittings, and repairs thereto;
• phones;
• internet;
• stationery.

For more on how it all works, here’s the SARS link:

For a quote to assist for your individual and/or company tax returns, contact us here.

Managing payroll for your business can be daunting and frustrating. Outsourcing your payroll can free up resources for more important operational tasks – saving you time and money.

Benefits of Outsourcing Your Payroll:

1. Your payroll is being run by a professional payroll administrator assigned to you with the specialised knowledge and expertise;
2. We have done this enough times to apply the lessons learnt to your business
3. Less time committed, as we take care of payroll related queries;
4. Get your staff paid accurately and on time, every month;
5. All statutory submissions are completed for you, on time;
6. All this is governed by our Service level agreement with you, to ensure our full commitment to your business.

At ConsultX, we use a South African service provider, SimplePay, to manage Payroll for our clients.

5 reasons why we use SimplePay:

Innovation

We have done our research and found SimplePay to be the most user-friendly, competent and cost-effective cloud-based service available.  It comes with all the necessary payroll communication tools, reports and compliance updates. It is seamless, and can also be integrated with your ERP and clock card applications, allowing for accurate timekeeping for staff clocking in and out.

Total Compliance

SimplePay is fully compliant with the SARS requirements as well as the BCEA Laws which ensures that our payroll legislation is always up to date with the latest requirements and processes, without any extra hassle.

Reliable and Flexible

The flexibility of the SimplePay platform means that it will scale to fit your business as it grows.

Our rates are on a sliding scale depending on your company needs and requirements, as set out in a service-level agreement which will be discussed and drawn up with the client.

The outsourced service means you don’t require a permanent resource to run your payroll. And if needed, we can assist your transition to in-house the service.

Confidentiality and Security

We guarantee that our highly professional payroll team works with complete confidentiality and accuracy at all times as required by the South African Protection of Personal Information Bill which seeks to regulate the processing of personal information.

Your payroll data is stored securely on the SimplePay POPIA compliant database.

Some of the obligations under POPI are to:

• only collect information that you need for a specific purpose
• apply reasonable security measures to protect it
• ensure it is relevant and up to date
• only hold as much as you need, and only for as long as you need it
• allow the subject of the information to see it upon request

Expertise

Our professionals have managed payrolls of large corporates, with headcounts in the hundreds. We are methodical, knowledgeable and good at what we do.

We have the time and focus to update our knowledge on payroll and HR legislation changes, which assists us in delivering accurate and compliant payrolls to our clients. Take the hassle out of month-ends and let us take care of your payroll from beginning to end.

To discuss options and pricing give us a call on 011 516 0210 or email craig@consultx.co.za.

We can assist you in all the requirements in starting and growing your new venture.

As Chartered Accountants and business advisors, we will partner with you and guide you through each process to get your business off the ground and flying high.

We assist with sourcing and applying for funding, financial models, deals and transactions, budgets, reports, contract management, project management, cost management, HR and more.

We have experience across sectors including travel, IT, services consulting, engineering & infrastructure, manufacturing, retail, online marketing amongst others. With this knowledge we support our clients to grow faster and smarter.

As your finance business partner we take an equity stake in the new business of 10%. This ensures our commitment to the growth of your business and gives the business room to grow while cashflow is tight.

If you would like to know more contact craig@consultx.co.za.

Take that leap and let’s make those ideas a reality together. The time is now!

For those businesses not already aware: For unpaid claims, the ufiling site is not working. So you must submit a completed UI19 form to covid19declarations@labour.gov.za.

Link to UI19 below:

https://consultx.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Form-UI-19-Declaration-of-information-of-commercial-employees-and-workers-employed-in-a-private-household.doc

In my morning reading I found this great research article in the Harvard Business Review – https://hbr.org/1983/05/the-five-stages-of-small-business-growth. It was written originally in 1983! But as with most good empirical research, I find it still very relevant today.

In my personal entrepreneurial journey and with my clients, I have been looking to understand how businesses grow, and what common factors lead to success or failure. This article provides a great perspective, with a sensible and applicable model for business owners to use in order to understand their situation.

I’d be interested to hear if you agree and in which stage you find yourself and your business. We can only truly maximize our opportunities if we educate ourselves on all factors impacting our potential. And develop an honest, impartial assessment of what needs to be done to attain success.

I plan on going over this research in more detail but for now, my first key takeaway from this research is this:

• Know yourself
• Know your business
• Know your market

Take an good honest look at those 3 areas and consider your goals, abilities and constraints in each. For example – are your goals in each area aligned? i.e you want to solve a need in the market, but are your personal goals and business goals currently working in that same direction? If you look again, your current business goals may have diverted from addressing that need, as a result of financial pressures or personal factors.

Additionally, consider your abilities, your business capabilities, in acheiving your goals. Do you currently have all the tools you need, and are you using them?

Finally, know your market. What is the need you aim to address? What is the problem you are solving? And how are you doing it in a manner that justifies your continued business existence?

If you’d like to discuss this further and take a dive into your business situation, please get in touch. I’d love to help you get on your way to maximising your business success.