Saving on the amount of tax you need to pay involves considerable tax structuring to your financial affairs both at home and abroad.
Structuring tax for assets and investments in South Africa:
There are a number of ways your accounting, tax and compliance team can help you with structuring tax in order to reduce your taxation and save. Business and personal tax planning, starting with tax structure assessments, can identify opportunities to save on tax. These may include:
- Investing in South African start-ups.
- Ensuring compliance with ever-changing regulations
- Taking fast advantage of any tax-breaks and opportunities for rebates, as they become available.
- Avoiding unnecessary penalties and tax disputes with SARS due to non-compliance and shoddy record-keeping.
- Choosing the right business and investment entities and tax management strategies.
Structuring tax on offshore assets and income:
Offshore investments have always been a great way to save on tax. However, the easy ‘escape’ from having to pay anything at all, is no longer available. Changes to South Africa’s tax legislation regarding offshore tax means that you now need professional and compliant tax structuring to:
- Help you structure your offshore investments and or business operations in a way that can save you as much money as possible by reducing the amount of tax you will have to pay to SARS from 2020.
- Avoid double taxation – being taxed in South Africa and the country where the assets are held and income derived. In this case, structuring your tax so that you pay the lesser taxable amount will certainly help you save.
- Set up structures such as Trusts, and seed investments offshore with money that has already been taxed in South Africa (and can clearly be shown to have been taxed) to avoid capital gains tax on the assets purchased.
In short – tax structuring to save money is now more about tax risk assessments, diversification of portfolios, keeping abreast of tax break opportunities and ensuring tax compliance. Taxation and tax planning is a shifting landscape, best navigated with professional taxation services.
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