State of the Nation Address 2012

State of the Nation Address By His Excellency Jacob G Zuma, please click here to read

News from the office of the South African Payroll Association

Well here we are again at the start of what promises to be another great year for the members of the Payroll Association.

Some of our members may not be aware of the work done behind the scenes by the Board of Directors of the South African Payroll Association. The purpose of this notice is to inform all our members and other interested parties of some of the projects we have been engaged in on your behalf.  As you know the Association was formed to promote the interests of the payroll Industry at large and with a serious intention of promoting the interest and the status of the Payroll Professional.

To this end we intend to apply to the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) in April 2012 when applications will be accepted to be registered as the Professional Body  in South Africa.  A great deal of work has been done in this respect and with the assistance of the Services SETA a committee was formed with representation from the Payroll departments of as many industries both large and small as we could accommodate. This committee had representation from industries such as Mining, Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing, Business Services and others.  Representatives came from various parts of South Africa in order to get  as wide and transparent a section of people engaged in the actual processing of payrolls. In a nutshell these were all payroll professionals working at the coal face with many years of experience between them.

These individuals and we must thank both them and their companies for the wonderful work they did, proceeded to develop a plan for the industry. Professional designations were scoped and developed with the necessary criteria. Jobs were dissected and experience and qualifications decided upon as a guide to these designations. A matrix covering the job, the tasks, the skills and the qualifications to fulfil the criteria of the designations was explored and developed.  A code of ethics was developed which would have to be signed by every certificated person. Personally I must applaud the committee members who undertook to volunteer their time without reward of any kind to complete this mammoth task.

Once this was completed the Association then had to look at the road forward and relook at the reason the Association was formed. The interest of our members is of paramount importance and to this end it was felt that we needed to concentrate on the professionalization of the member. The directors have agreed that the best manner in which to do this  must be to begin (Once the application for Professional Body Status has been approved) with the certification of our members. As is common knowledge we have two types of membership at present. Corporate membership and non-corporate. We will not at this time be moving away from this but will by January 2013 need to have the names and details of all persons covered by the Corporate membership. The reason for this is that certification cannot be awarded to a company but only to an individual person. Once the intricacies are ironed out each member will be communicated with directly. We will of course be providing updates as we proceed towards the goal of being recognised as the professional body.

The benefits for the members are amongst others:
Professional status and designation recognised both internally in South Africa and with our friends in the international community.

Certificated members will have the advantage of being registered with a professional body.
Employers will be more likely to employ certificated payroll professionals who are in good standing with a professional body.

This obviously will take time but please be reassured that we are working for each and every one of our members. If you would like more particulars please contact Val at val@payrollassociation.co.za who will be more than happy to assist.

Ask Val

Your opportunity to ask our panel of experts any industry related question.

Question 1
An employee has been working for me for only 4 months and receives his salary every month, How many days leave is he entitled to and should I pay him for the weeks that we are closed?

Answer
Payment for the closure period depends on the contract of the employee (Refer Section 20 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA)).  Leave must be paid in terms of the Section 20 (2)b of the BCEA: "employer must grant employee 1 day of annual leave for every 17 days on which the employee has worked".  In terms of Section 18 (2)a of the BCEA: "an employee must be paid at least the wage that the employee would ordinarily have received for work on that day" for payment of public holidays if there are any public holidays during the closure period.

Question 2
If an employee earns approximately R2.4million annually and has a medical aid contribution of R4680.00, I need to link a company car as a fringe benefit costing R686 360.00 (2011/2012 Mercedes-Benz E350 CDI).  How do I calculate this as a fringe benefit?

Answer
I would like to refer you to the SARS website www.sars.gov.za
Click on the tab "TAX TYPES"
Then click on "INCOME TAX"
Then click on "TAX RATES, TABLES OF INTEREST AND EMPLOYERS' TAX GUIDES & TABLES"
The Heading "STATUTORY RATES AND TAX TABLES" will display Under March 2011 - February 2012 click on "GUIDE FOR EMPLOYERS IRO FRINGE BENEFITS"
In this guide the taxation of company cars is explained fully.

SAPA gets strategic for 2012

At the SAPA Board Strategy Session which was held on 24 November 2011, a number of strategic decisions were made to take the association forward:

The Board RESOLVED to convert from a Section 21 Company to a Common Law Association and to adopt a New Constitution which will govern the operations of the association through operating policies.

Each Board Member has taken on a specific portfolio for which they will be responsible in the year ahead.

These portfolios and the relevant portfolio managers are as follows:

Chairman – James McKerrell
Governance – Sheila Leyde
Finance – James McKerrell
Membership – Val Forrest & Eric Loubser
Events – Lavine Haripersad
Marketing – Steve Krause
Statutory Information – Cathie Webb

Keep looking out for our weekly newsflashes in 2012 when the Board Members will be introduced to you individually.

A Special General Meeting for members of the association will be held on 09 February 2012 at 09:30 at the Woodmead Johannesburg Country Club, for the adoption of the constitution by the membership. You are therefore requested to mark this date in your calendar before the close of this year to ensure that you are part of this exciting process.

An exciting event program is also being planned for 2012 and we will keep you notified of all upcoming events and the introduction of new programmes and marketing strategies being planned for the association as well. Something to look forward to in this regard is the introduction of the Payroll Awards and National Payroll Week!

Keep those cellphones handy since SAPA intends to keep you up to date on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as we start using the airwaves to keep our members informed and invite you to participate in active and informative discussions.

Of course the long awaited professionalization process will hopefully get underway in the first quarter of 2012, which will bring about a change in the membership structure and categories in 2013 but you will be kept informed of progress in this regard. A snippet of information in this regard was included in the 2012 billing email which you received earlier this week .

We envisage partnering with a number of organisations by means of a memorandum of understanding, which will be beneficial to both SAPA and our partners to take the association to new heights.

And finally – on behalf of’ the Exco and Secretariat I would like to take this opportunity to thank our members for their loyal support this past year.

We wish all our supporters and their loved ones –
   Happy Holidays
   A Festive Season filled with great joy
   And a fantastic 2012

James McKerrell - SAPA Chairman

NEWS FROM SARS

With the tax year end approaching faster than we like, it can be confirmed that the format of certificates to be submitted to SARS will not change.

It should be noted that there are changes which become effective 1st March 2012.  For details it is advisable to refer to the SARS website for the new specification (www.sars.gov.za).  These changes affect not only the certificates which will be submitted for the new tax year, but may also affect the way in which remuneration components are calculated (e.g. Medical Tax Credits).  Refer to the Business Requirement Specification (BRS): Medical Scheme Fees Tax Credit