The Skills Development Act No. 97 of 1998 has as its purpose:
- To develop the skills of the South African workforce
- To increase the levels of investment in education and training
- To encourage employers to provide employees with the opportunity to learn new skills
- To encourage workers to participate in training programmes
- To improve employment prospects for previously disadvantaged persons
- To ensure the quality of workplace education and training
Every employer as defined in Fourth Schedule to the Income Tax Act is liable for the levy, except for the following:
- Any public service employer
- Any employer for whom there are reasonable grounds for believing that the total amount of payroll (remuneration) payable to all its employees during the following 12 months will not exceed R 500 000
- Any religious or charitable institution or fund of a public character whose income is exempt from income tax
- Any national or provincial public entity, if 80% or more of its expenditure is defrayed from funds voted by Parliament
If you fell into any of the categories above at the time that you outsourced your payroll to HRTorQue, you will not be registered for, nor will your company be calculating SDL and if we are making payments to SARS on your behalf, we will not be making this payment on behalf of your company, because you fell outside the definition as above.
Possible Action from you:
If you anticipate at any time that your payroll remuneration will exceed R500 000 in the following 12 months, or one of the other conditions has changed within your organisation.
Please advise your payroll administrator with immediate effect. Our tax department will contact you and make arrangements to register you for SDL, the payroll will be amended to calculate this amount and our payroll administration department will invoice and pay over this amount for you.
We unfortunately cannot make this choice for you as we cannot anticipate your actual salary bill for the next 12 months.
Please contact us if you don’t understand what’s required, or if we can assist you in any way: 031 564 1155.