How to claim for Skills Development Levy
by Claire Stewart on 20/10/08 at 10:06 pm
15 comments
All organisations with a payroll of more than R500k per annum are required to pay a Skills Development Levy of 1% of that payroll… BUT did you know that it is possible to claim up to 50% of that amount back?
What you need to do is:
- Register with your particular Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) – see a list of the SETA’s below.
- Decide what training would strategically benefit your organisation and your employees best (taking into account factors such as company growth strategies, succession planning, BEE Scorecards, management grooming, upliftment programmes, employee’s career development and skill needs etc).
- Put together a training plan for the year.
- Compile and submit a Workplace Skills Plan to your SETA (the template for the Workplace Skills Plan is on your SETA’s website or you can often submit it online). The SETA training year runs from 1 April each year until 31 March the following year- the Workplace Skills Plans need to be submitted by the 30 June.
Thereafter each year your organisation will submit a Workplace Skills Plan detailing the planned training for the forthcoming year and an Annual Training Report detailing the training actually done in the past year.
It is possible to get additional grants; have a look at your SETA’s website (see below).
Give me a shout if you get stuck or just don’t have the time to do this yourself. PeopleWise provides outsourced skills development facilitation which runs the whole process.
Next time, my post will be about learnerships (based on the apprenticeship system) – they’re a good thing for a lot of reasons… good tax rebates, great for BEE Scorecards, you get to cherry-pick the best learners and you benefit South Africa’s economy – not bad!!!
List of SETA’s:
- Banking: www.bankseta.org.za
- Construction: www.ceta.org.za
- Chemical Industries: www.chieta.org.za
- Clothing, textiles, footwear and leather: www.ctlfseta.org.za
- Diplomacy, Intelligence, Defence and Trade and Industry: www.didteta.co.za
- Education, Training and Development: www.etdpseta.org.za
- Energy: www.estea.org.za
- Forestry: www.fieta.org.za
- Financial and Accounting: www.fasset.org.za
- Food and beverages: www.foodbev.org.za
- Health and welfare: www.hwseta.org.za
- Insurance: www.inseta.org.za
- Information systems, electronics and telecommunications: www.isett.org.za
- Local government, water and related services: www.lgwseta.co.za
- Media, advertising, publishing, printing and packaging: www.mappp-seta.co.za
- Manufacturing, engineering and related services: www.merseta.org.za
- Mining: www.mqa.org.za
- Primary agriculture: www.paeta.co.za
- Police, private security, legal and correctional services: www.poslecseta.org.za
- Business services: www.serviceseta.org.za
- Secondary agriculture: www.setasa.co.za
- Transport: www.teta26.co.za
- Tourism and hospitality: www.theta.org.za
- Wholesale and Retail: www.wrseta.org.za
Claire Stewart is the founder of PeopleWise, an HR and Employment consulting service. Like Neo in the Matrix, Claire sees through the convoluted mess of SA employment law and makes sense of it for you, loyal Ideate reader. View more articles by Claire Stewart.
Tags: advertising, Business Management, HR
Marc R
Oct 21st, 2008
Hi Claire, very useful article. These issues are such a stumbling block for smaller operators and they always seem to lose out on these benefits!well done!
kumar
Nov 20th, 2008
HI, I JUST OPENED A SAFETY BUSINESS AND IT IS RUN BY MYSELF ONLY. I NEED TO GO FOR A COURSE TO UPGRADE MY SKILLS WHICH IS
R23 000. I AM NOT REGISTERED (TOO DIFFICULT TO GET REGISTERED). I DONT KNOW HOW THE SKILLS LEVY WORK AS WELL. HOW CAN I CLAIM BACK FROM GOVERNMENT.
Claire
Nov 24th, 2008
Dear Kumar,
Bad news I’m afraid- you can’t claim this amount back from the Government. The way the Skills Development Levy works is that you pay 1% of your payroll to your SETA and then when you submit your Workplace Skills Plan you get 50% of your levy back. But I’d suggest that you contact the Dept of Trade and Industry (www.dti.gov.za)- they do have initiatives for entrepeneurs which could be helpful to you.
Kind regards,
Claire
Ian
Sep 21st, 2010
Hi Claire
When looking to put together a work place skills plan, is it a requirment for companies to use registered training providers in order to claim back thier levies, and if so what about certification courses offered by professional bodies?
Regards
Ian
Claire
Sep 22nd, 2010
Hi Ian,
Most SETA’s only require about 70% of the planned training to be accredited. The rest can be non-accredited training.
Certification courses offered by professional bodies would count as accredited training.
Regards,
Claire
Thapelo
Mar 17th, 2011
Hi Clair
Can we get grant if we use training company that is not yet registered
Mr. T
Claire
Mar 22nd, 2011
Hi Thapelo,
Yes, you will still be eligible to receive the mandatory grant if you use unregistered training providers as long as approximately 80% of your other training is done with registered training providers.
JC
Oct 12th, 2011
……..you pay 1% of your payroll to your SETA and then when you submit your Workplace Skills Plan you get 50% of your levy back. ,,,,,,,,,
Hi Claire – What is the breakdown of this 0.5% which I can get back ?
Atr done – 10%
WSP done 10%
SDF registered 20%
Madatory grants 10% etc
Normally its 40% get back from the 1%, what I REQUIRE IS THIS BREAKDOWN, regards
Christelle
Feb 15th, 2012
Hi Claire,
Why do we have to pay the levy to the SETA if we already pay it to SARS, how does this work then?
Do you maybe have then application forms for employers to register with Construction CETA, because trust me, to try and contact them and get somewhere is impossible.
kindest regards
tsietsi
Mar 20th, 2012
hi! there i will like to ask, if you used to pay (skill development levy) on a company and the company get closed, can you be able to apply to have some traing?
Yvonne
Apr 11th, 2012
Hi, do we need to fill in a form to apply for a refund on skills development levy and where would we get this. We had an article clerk last year can we claim for the salary paid?
Precious
Aug 13th, 2012
Hi There, I recently registered an non profit organisation on skills development of PDi’s that I would like to place with companies on learnership/internship programms with companies and would like to know if I can claim levies on their behalf as d middle man?
Claire Stewart
Aug 14th, 2012
No, unfortunately you will not be able to. The company’s that you place the learners with will pay the Skills Development Levy on these learners and as such only they may claim the mandatory grant on the Skills Development Levy.
isaac
Dec 10th, 2012
hi, can seta train me claim from skills levy ?
issac
isaac
Dec 10th, 2012
hi, can seta train me claim from skills levy ?
issac