TAX experts have urged the Treasury to backdate the change in the definition of small businesses so that personal liability companies — such as doctors, attorneys, accountants and architects — can benefit from the lower tax rates and allowances that they should have enjoyed for the past five years. The exclusion of personal liability companies from 2011 is an error the Treasury proposes to address in the 2016 draft Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, which is before Parliament’s standing committee on finance. It has proposed the amendment be effective from March 1 2016. The South African Institute of Tax Professionals argues that while small businesses welcome the relief, "many small practitioners are arguing that the relief should be backdated because the problem stems from an inadvertent error. The failure to backdate means that substantial taxes may be owing plus penalties and interest," it said during public hearings on the bill. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (S...
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