1. Parental leave and UIF benefit update
2. UIF amendments and new forms
3. Draft Employment Equity Bill
4. HRTorQue December closure dates
5. Psiber release notes – October 2019
6. Publication of the Explanatory Summary of the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Bill, 2019
7. Lesotho tax rate changes
8. Compensation Fund – Opportunity to submit outstanding Return of Earnings
9. Legislation published in October 2019

Should you require any further detail on any of these topics, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Author: Nosisa Ndhlovu (source PAGSA)

The purpose of this article is to follow the process so far and the latest position on the new and amended legislation that was issued January 2017 in relation to parental and UIF benefits. The article focuses largely on the new leave types that have been added to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and to the UIF benefits that will pay for that leave. Below is an overview of the relevant Amendment Acts and Regulations;

Unemployment Insurance Amendment Act (promulgated 19 January 2017) (UIAA)

The UIAA published in January 2017 allowed for:

• an increase in the value of the benefit amount,
• sought to improve the administration process for claims; and
• introduced the ‘’reduced working hours’’ (or short time) benefit.

The final UIAA contained two errors in that it incorrectly provided for:

• “Credit days” to be calculated at a rate of 1 credit day for every five days employed (instead of every four days); and
• Miscarriage cases to be entitled to a maternity benefit of “17 to 32” weeks (instead of “17.32” weeks).

The UIAA was not made effective when it was promulgated for two reasons:

• Regulations were needed to provide for the UIF benefit claims in respect of ‘’reduced working hours’’; and
• also the above two errors in the LLAA.

In order to overcome these two hurdles:

• A draft regulation was issued on 14 July to provide for ‘’ reduced working hours’’ benefit claims and
• the Labour Laws Amendment Bill, that at the time was moving through the various stages of the legislation amendment cycle, was used to correct the two errors in the LLAA.

Labour Laws Amendment Act (LLAA) (27 November 2018)

This legislation;

• Adds three new types of leave to BCEA;
  • Parental leave of 10 consecutive days for birth of a child- therefore deletes 3 days paid family responsibility leave.
  • Adoption leave of 10 consecutive weeks for one of the adopting parents.
  • Commissioning parental leave of 10 consecutive weeks for one of the surrogate parents.
• Adds two new types of benefit to the Unemployment Insurance Act (UIA):
  • Parental leave benefit and Commissioning parental leave benefit.
• Corrects the two errors in the Unemployment Insurance Amendment Act (UIAA) as described above.

The LLAA was promulgated on 27 November 2018 but was not made effective at the time in order to give the UIF authorities time in which to regulate the forms and procedures that must be in place to claim.

Amendment of Unemployment Insurance Act regulations (28 December 2018) – short time

The regulation specifies;

• The rules that the fund must follow when calculating the value of the reduced working hours benefit and changes to the UI-19 form that add code 17 (reduced work time) to the reason for termination codes. Employers can therefore make use of the UI-19 form to manually declare employees on short time to facilitate the reduced working time benefit claim by these employees. While the manual process is in place, the current E03 Declaration that specifies the information that payroll systems must declare on a monthly basis to the fund has not yet been changed to add Termination code 17.  However, we understand that if submitted by payroll it will not be rejected by the fund’s validation checks.

Amendment of Unemployment Insurance Act Regulations (8 October 2019)

"Identity Document" for the purpose of the Unemployment Insurance Act now refers to the Refugees Act.

Amendment now includes:

1.             The RSA bar coded 13-digit Identity Document

2.             The RSA Bar- coded Passport

3.             Foreign identity documents and passports

4.             Permits and other identifying documents issued in terms of the Refugees Act

Commencement of Labour Laws Amendment Act (29 October 2019)

The sections of the LLAA that are effective from 1 November 2019 are the sections that amend the Unemployment Insurance Act to provide for the:

• Right to parental benefits, application for parental benefits and payment of parental benefits and matters related to parental leave benefits.

To Note;

• Only the parental benefits are effective (changes to Adoption leave and new Commissioning parental benefits are not yet in effect) 
• Sections of the LLAA that create the three new leave types in the BCEA have not been made effective, therefore, in legal terms there is no such thing as parental leave as specified in the LLAA.

While a contributor is legally entitled to claim parental leave from 1 November 2019, the fund cannot pay in respect of this policy-related leave. While legal guidance is being sought on this fact employers should be careful in granting parental leave. The safest approach is to remain with the BCOE and grant three days family responsibility leave until this is clarified.

Amendment of Unemployment Insurance Act Regulations (4 November 2019)

Specifies the forms and procedures that must be followed when applying for both parental and commissioning parental leave.

Application must be made at a labour office and must be in the form of a UI2.9 along with other documentation specified. Regulation 5B is identical to regulation 5A except that it refers to "commissioning parental benefits" instead of to "parental benefits" and will come into effect on 1 April 2020.

The new forms are specified in the regulation, including a revised UI-19 form that specifies two new "reasons for termination" codes:

• Code 18: Commissioning Parental leave; and
• Code 19: Parental leave

Manual UI-19 and Electronic Declarations              

The E03 specification that payrolls must comply with when creating the monthly UIF declaration file has not yet been changed to align with the electronic declaration and the changes to the manual UI-19 form discussed above.

Parental benefits can only be claimed manually using the UI-19 form plus other forms specified. In order to facilitate the approval of the two new leave types, the two new ‘’reason for termination’’ codes discussed above have been added to the revised UI-19 form, can be safely reported by the payroll even though the E03 has not yet been officially amended and commissioning parental leave will only come into effect on 1 April 2020.

Author: Jonathan Aitken

Amended and new forms:

• Forms 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6; 2.7, 2.8, 19 and 53 have been substituted for the evenly numbered forms in the Annexure in the Amendment of the Unemployment Insurance Act Regulations.
• New forms 2.1P, 2.2P, 2.3P, 2.4P, 2.9P, 2.12P, 2.9 and 2.12 have been added to the Amendment of the Unemployment Insurance Act Regulations.

For more information please follow this link

Author: Jonathan Aitken (source crs.co.za )

The Employment Equity Amendment Bill, 2018 and the Draft Employment Equity Regulations, 2018 were published for public comment for 60 days from 21 September 2018 to 20 November 2018.

The amended Employment Equity Bill would empower the Labour Minister to regulate sector-specific employment equity targets and promulgate Section 53 of the Act to enable the issuing of Employment Equity compliance certificates as a prerequisite for accessing state contracts.

A summary of the proposed changes are:

The definition of a “designated employer” changes by removing paragraph (b) of the definition: “(b) a person who employs fewer than 50 employees but has a total turnover that is equal to or above the applicable annual turnover of a small business in terms of Schedule 4 of this Act”.

In short, this means that all employers with less than 50 employees will be excluded from Chapter 3 of the Employment Equity Act (Affirmative Action) and will no longer have to submit an annual Equity Report. The only parties then required to comply with Chapter 3 (Affirmative Action) would be:

1. A person who employs 50 or more employees; or
2. A municipality as referred to in Chapter 7 of the constitution;
3. An organ of state as defined in section 239 of the Constitution, but excluding the National Defence Force, the National Intelligence Agency and the South African Secret Service

Section 14 of the principal Act (Voluntary Compliance) is deleted. This means that in theory in terms of section 53 (State Contracts), employers with less than 50 employees will no longer be able to participate in a government tender. However, small employers can still be issued with a Certificate of Compliance to enable them to do business with Government, provided they comply with Chapter 2 of the EE Act (Unfair Discrimination) and the National Minimum Wage Act.

A new subsection, section 15A has been added to Chapter 3, Section 15 (Affirmative action measures) of the Act.

Section 15A (Establishment of sectoral targets) has been added to specify numerical targets for any sector or part of a sector. This means:

The Minister may publish a notice in the Gazette identifying national economic sectors for the purposes of the EE Act, having regard to any relevant code contained in the Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities published by Statistics South Africa.

The Minister may, by notice in the Gazette, set numerical targets for any sector or part of a sector identified. The notice issued may set different numerical targets for different occupational levels or regions within a sector or based on any other relevant factor.

The Minister may also issue regulations prescribing the criteria to be considered in determining a numerical target.

Section 53 (State Contracts) of the EE Act is amended by the insertion of a new subsection (6) which states:

“The Minister may only issue a certificate in terms of subsection (2) if the Minister is satisfied that the employer:-

1. has met any sectoral targets in terms of section 15A that applies to it or has provided reasonable grounds, as contemplated by section 42(4), justifying its failure to comply;
2. has submitted a report in terms of section 21;
3. has not been found by the CCMA or a court within the previous twelve months to have:-
   1. breached the prohibition on unfair discrimination in Chapter 2; or
   2. failed to pay the national minimum wage in terms of the National Minimum Wage Act, 2017 (Act of 2017).”

To view the Employment Equity Amendment Bill 2018, follow the link

Author: Karen van den Bergh

The Festive period is fast approaching and, to enable us to ensure that your payroll runs are processed effectively and trouble free, we would like to schedule your payroll runs for December 2019 and January 2020.

Therefore we'd appreciate it if you'd advise us when your payroll runs are anticipated to take place. If you are closing down in December please provide a cell number and contact name for proof of payment confirmation in December, this is often a struggle area for us when companies are closed.

While we will try to accommodate all requests, please be aware that we cannot accommodate last minute changes. In addition, we cannot accept any responsibility for payroll being delayed at year end where client staff are unavailable to approve the payroll before submission.

Should you have any queries, please contact me or your dedicated payroll administrator.

We take this opportunity to wish you and your family best wishes for the Festive Season and thank you for entrusting your payroll to our company.

________________________________________________________________________________________

PLEASE NOTE:

HRTorQue will be closing on Thursday, 19th December 2019, and will re-open on Monday 6th January 2020. During this time, we will have skeleton staff, as we are aware that some clients will not be closing and we will make special arrangements for staff to be available for them.

During the shutdown time please keep these numbers on hand.

Karen van den Bergh: 0828911722 – for any payroll or 3rd party payment queries.

Nicky Hardwick: 0837886999 – for any labour or HR issues.

Author: Jonathan Aitken

For users of eTorQue, Psiber has made a number of changes to the system to improve functionality. The changes are reflected in their first, second and third release notes in October and in their release for December.

Author: Jonathan Aitken

Government gave notice that the Minister of Finance intends to introduce the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Bill, 2019 to the National Assembly soon. An explanatory summary of the Bill was published in accordance with the Rules of the National Assembly.

The Bill provides for the amendment of the Income Tax Act, 1962; Customs and Excise Act, 1964; Value Added Tax Act, 1991; Skills Development Levies Act, 1999; Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act, 2002; and the Tax Administration Act, 2011. Further details of the Bill can be obtained here.

Author: Jonathan Aitken (source crs.co.za)

Legal Notice 84 of 2019 was published on 3 October 2019 regarding changes to the Second Schedule in the Income Tax Act 1993 (as amended) and became effective on 1 October 2019.

The law provides for an individual to be granted a personal tax credit. The personal tax credit has been increased from M7,260 to M9,600 per annum, effective 1 October 2019.

Author: Jonathan Aitken (source PAGSA)

The Compensation Fund has issued a final reminder for the submission of outstanding Returns of Earnings that were originally due in May 2019 for the 2018 period.

Employers are urged to submit their returns before 31 December 2019 in order to prevent estimations and penalties.

Author: Jonathan Aitken (source PAGSA)

Statutory organisations (e.g. SARS, the Department of Labour) have published the following documents/notices during October 2019. Link to documents: The link is either provided beneath the details of the document or in the description of the document.

SARS

UIF (Unemployment Insurance Fund)

OTHER

Phone: 031 564 1155  •  Email: [email protected]  •  Website: www.hrtorque.co.za