South Africans have a rather poor savings culture, which is part of the reason that only 6% of us are on track for a decent retirement. It’s also why the government incentivises us to be better savers by offering retirement savers a “discount” (through higher take-home pay) or “cashback” (through a tax refund) on money saved for retirement.
It is in everyone’s interest that each of us saves for our own retirement, which is why contributions to retirement savings products are tax deductible. Whatever amount you put towards a retirement annuity or a pension or provident fund comes off the annual total earnings you are taxed on. If you earn R500,000 a year and contribute R50,000 to your retirement fund, you are taxed on only R450,000. (This illustrates the principle only – in reality your tax calculation will likely have other deductions as well.)
At current tax rates, in the example above, saving R50,000 for retirement in a year would mean you would qualified for a tax deduction or refund of R18,000. This means that your R50,000 contribution to your retirement fund would cost you only R32,000. If your employer takes your contributions into account when deducting PAYE your monthly contribution of around R4,200 to your retirement fund costs you a little less than R2,700 a month. Contribute R75,000 instead of R50,000 and your tax refund increases to R27,000.
Put differently, if your tax rate is 30%, every R1,000 you save costs you only R700. Or your take-home pay would reduce by R700, but a full R1,000 has gone toward your retirement savings.
Why wouldn’t you take full advantage of the government effectively diverting some of the tax you would normally pay into your own retirement savings fund?
We all understand the concept of the more you earn, the more tax you pay. With retirement saving, the more you save, the less tax you pay.
You can claim tax relief up to a maximum of 27.5% of your earnings (capped at R350,000). But if you contribute more than that in a tax year, it is rolled over to the next tax year. The tax year ends on February 28 so you still have a little time to get the maximum benefit of this year’s tax saving. Learn more about tax and your retirement annuity here.
PS. If you are a 10X client you can quickly and easily top up your RA via the My10X client portal. Log in here then click on your investment, and select the button that says 'make a deposit'.
