Articles
Time Value of Money in Estate Planning
By Liezel Hodgson 10 March 2025 Estate planning is like harvesting prickly pears. The harvest requires careful planning and using the correct tools, or it can end in a painful thorny mess. The harvest is never easy, but the fruit is delicious. The reward of a well...
Be A Step Ahead With Provisional Tax
By Nannette Botha Cash flow considerations with provisional tax can be a headache. Provisional tax does seem like an administrative hurdle from SARS, but with some planning, it can be used as a tool that allows both tax planning and cash flow planning. Important dates...
VAT Rate on Services to Non-Residents
by Liezel Hodgson Section 11 of the Value-Added Tax Act No. 89 of 1991 deals with several instances where a rate of 0% VAT can be charged. Subsection 2 of this section applies specifically to the rendering of services. Section 11(2)(l) specifically refers to services...
SARS and OTP’s
by Nannette Botha SARS is continually busy with enhancements to its efiling platform. One of these is the introduction of One-Time Pins to effect certain actions on the platform. Choosing a password reveals a lot about yourself – including your personality and your...
New Requirements For Trusts
4 June 2024 IF YOU ARE A TRUSTEE OF A TRUST, THERE ARE NEW LEGAL REQUIREMENTS YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF: SARS IT3(t) DATA SUBMISSION Legislative background The South African Revenue Services published requirements for the reporting of information by...
Buying Art? Which Legal Entity is Best?
7 March 2024 Walking down the main street of a beautiful little town, you find an exquisite painting of the surrounding area. You immediately feel the urge to purchase the item, but have you considered in which part of your family’s legal structures you might...
Our Family Wealth Office
Auro Professional Family Wealth Office The family wealth office is the one stop service provider where the administrative, accounting, wealth, taxation and risk aspects of a family’s wealth are managed collectively and holistically. This is achieved through...
Legislative Compliance
Legal compliance is important in any business, big or small. Absence thereof can damage the company’s reputation and even threaten its very existence. Points to ponder: Are you aware of the legislation applicable to your business? How do you ensure that your business...
Succession Planning
We all dream of leaving a legacy behind. To achieve this, we need to think and plan well ahead. You need to ensure that your business remains agile well after the most important key players, be it owners or valuable employees, move on to new opportunities, retire or...
Strategy
Any business needs a long-term plan to achieve the desired future goal. Strategy should inform planning, and, as we know, failing to plan is planning to fail. Points to ponder: What is your vision for the company? What are the core values of your business? Have you...
Information Reconciliation and Verification
Reconciliations are a fundamental accounting process to check for accounting errors or fraudulent activity within your business accounts. Matching your internal financial accounting records to supporting records or performing analytical reviews of your accounts at...
Month End Optimisation
You need up to date and accurate information to make the correct decisions within the management of your business. One of the hurdles to this, is the delay in management information. This is usually due to month end processes not being efficient and being...
Debtor Management
Your clients and customers are a crucial part of your business. Without them, you can't really call it a business. They do however need to adhere to your agreement on payment terms and unfortunately, many clients and customers need to be reminded of their obligations...
Budgeting
Failing to plan, is planning to fail. A well-planned budget process will facilitate a thorough rethink of your income cycles and cost processes. You might be surprised at what inefficiencies hide in your costs! As such, I am a fan of zero-based budgeting. If you use...
Net Interest Cost Management
Cash flow is typically cyclical. During some portions of the month, your net cash position might be positive, but you do not earn any interest on this. You might also have other long-term facilities like vehicle finance or bonds on which you pay interest at a much...
Tax Planning
Tax is an expense and expenses should be managed and kept as low as possible. That is a basic business principle. To manage tax, you need to be able to estimate it (“to measure is to know”, if I may quote a previous employer). This entails being able to know your...
Efficient Financial Management
It is always worthwhile to reflect on your “road to here”, in other words, thinking about all your experiences and the things that shaped your business to its current position. We decided it might be worthwhile to share certain experiences around financial...
3 Years Strong
3 Years Strong When you start with something new, it always comes with a lot of unknowns. You have a certain picture in your mind, but the end result might be different. When we started Auro Professional 3 years ago on 7 November 2016, we had an idea, saw an...
Doing good, feeling great!
Doing good, feeling great! No, this is not some kind of “wellness programme” advertisement, this time, we are talking about tax. 28 February 2018 is the end of the tax year for individuals and many other entities. This means that if you want to structure your tax...
Clear Communication – An Absolute Business, Tax and Personal Imperative
Clear Communication – An Absolute Business, Tax and Personal Imperative In this article, Niel du Plessis shares his view on recent tax and communication developments. In a recent court case in the Gauteng Division, Pretoria, of the High Court (Pienaar Brothers (Pty)...