Increase in Skills Development Levy
by Claire Stewart on 26/05/09 at 1:43 pm
1 comment
I’ve heard from the very reliable source that the Skills Development Levy is going to increase from 1% of gross annual payroll to 3% as at August of this year. This will only effect organisations whose payroll is over R500 000 per annum. Those who fall below this threshold are exempt from the levy.
The reason that government is considering this increase is to encourage organisations to spend more on training which is obviously imperative for South Africa’s development. My view is that while this has merit, the timing is not great taking these tough economic times into consideration.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel: If an organisation submits a Workplace Skills Plan to their SETA, they can claim back about 65% of their levy in the form of mandatory grants from their SETA.
Something else that’s really important for organisation’s to know is that in terms of BEE, generic organisations (organisation’s with a gross annual turnover of R35 million/annum) must submit a Workplace Skills Plan otherwise they can’t claim one cent of their training spend when calculating the Skills Development aspect of their BEE Scorecard.
The deadline for Workplace Skills Plans to be submitted in 30th June 2009 but its worth getting going early as its often pretty hard to get hold of the SETA’s or actually get your Workplace Skills Plan in via fax or online in the last few weeks before the deadline.
We’re registered Skills Development Facilitators which means that organisation’s can outsource the compilation and submission of their Workplace Skills Plans to us. As an extra benefit, the cost of our SDF services can be counted under the training aspect of BEE Scorecards.
Give me a shout if you’d like a proposal or if you have any questions about today’s post.
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: human resources, South Africa
MADS
Sep 17th, 2009
SARS has no intention to increase SDL contributions from 1% to 3%. The SDL contribution payable by employers with a payroll bill exceeding R500 000 over the next 12-month period remains at 1% of monthly taxable remuneration as defined by SARS (not gross annual remuneration)