Retirement Funds & Private Benefits

These are optional but common. Configure them before payroll so retirement deductions, the retirement-deduction cap, and medical tax credits are applied correctly.

Retirement funds

Create a Retirement Fund record for each pension, provident or retirement-annuity fund the employer offers:

Then create the matching Salary Components:

• An employee deduction component (treatment Retirement Fund, 0% PAYE inclusion — contributions reduce taxable income), mapped to SARS code 4001 and the retirement liability account.
• An employer contribution component in the Salary Structure's Company Contribution table, if the employer contributes.

The retirement-deduction cap

South African tax limits the deductible retirement contribution to a percentage of remuneration up to an annual cap (both held in the statutory rate pack). The salary-slip engine applies this automatically: contributions above the cap are not deductible, and the engine records the non-deductible excess in the salary slip field za_retirement_fund_taxable_excess, adding it back to taxable income. You do not calculate this by hand — but you should review it (see Understanding the SA Salary Slip).

Medical aid and the medical tax credit

For employees on a medical scheme:

1. Add a Medical Aid deduction component (treatment Medical Aid, SARS code 4005).
2. Record the number of dependants on the Employee (Number of Dependants field) so the engine can compute the medical scheme fees tax credit (main member + dependants) and offset it against PAYE.

The medical tax credit rates come from the statutory rate pack (Tax Rebates and Medical Tax Credit).

Fringe / private benefits

za_local provides DocTypes for common fringe benefits, captured per employee via Employee Private Benefit and the specific benefit types:

• Company Car Benefit
• Housing Benefit
• Low-Interest Loan Benefit
• Cellphone Benefit
• Fuel Card Benefit
• Bursary Benefit

Capture the benefit details so the taxable fringe-benefit value flows into the employee's remuneration and onto the IRP5 under the correct SARS code. Configure these for employees who receive such benefits before processing their pay.

Next

Capture your Employee Master & SA Details.