Dear Members
Thank you to those who managed to attend the sixth annual FISA Conference in August. I’m sure you agree with me that we continue to raise the bar each year in terms of quality of presentations and interesting discussion.
In this issue of FISA Focus we give a detailed account of recent regulatory developments which I hope you will find useful. We also focus on the growing presence of FISA in the media and provide links to where we have commented on industry issues or educated the public on fiduciary matters. We are increasingly regarded as THE place to go for fiduciary comment, as shown by the Personal Finance Directory.
The more we get the FISA name out there, the better it is for you as members. Please remember to watch the FISA website for regular media posts and feel free to forward on articles of interest to your own clients.
Fiduciary regards
Ronel Williams, Chairperson
This edition’s cartoon was once again commissioned from Colin Daniel.
© Colin Daniel
Regulatory Developments
Please click here to read an update by the FISA Council on the Davis Tax Committee’s Second report on Estate Duty and the new section 7C of the Income Tax Act as proposed in the Draft Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, 2016.
Looking back to earlier published comment, Business Times picked up on Dr Stefan Strydom’s summary of FISA’s submission to the DTC on the First Interim Report on Trusts & Estate Duty.
Regarding section 7C, FISA CEO Louis van Vuren, was interviewed in August by Ingé Lamprecht of Moneyweb as well as Business Day.
FISA Conference
If you have not yet visited the conference photo gallery, please do so here and you can also read the synopsis of presentations as published on FANews.co.za. Judge Ngoepe’s paper on tax ethics was highly newsworthy, published in several media outlets including Rapport and Moneyweb.
Some of the other papers published include Hanneke Farrand, Director at ENSafrica, on the tax implications of emigration in TaxTalk and Prof Francois du Toit of the Faculty of Law at UFS on freedom of testation in Personal Finance.
Several legal media also attended the conference with an overview written and published by De Rebus.
Women’s Month
Every year during Women’s Month in August, FISA writes something around fiduciary planning for women in an effort to help educate.
This year we wrote on the impact of marital regimes in Moneyweb and Angélique Visser, FISA National Councillor, also wrote a step-by-step guide to wealth planning which was published by InvestSA and Fin24.
General Public Education
One of FISA’s objectives is to educate the public on basic fiduciary matters.
In the past year, Angélique Visser was featured on a series of TV shows on Soweto TV talking about “the cost of death”; Ronel Williams was on RSG Geldsake talking about wills.
Basic messages often need to be repeated and so Louis and Ronel spoke yet again about the alter ego principle on Moneyweb and the Citizen published an article on Wills.
Reader Queries
As part of our media outreach programme, FISA is regularly asked by journalists to give answers to readers’ queries, such as in City Press (What are the rights of a beneficiary of a will?) and in Personal Finance magazine (Can a will be changed?).
You/Huisgenoot magazine also request input from FISA from time to time and regularly recommend us as a source for fiduciary advice.
Member Media Contributions
Several FISA members are active in the media in their own right. We are always grateful when they use the name ‘FISA’ in their byline.
Of particular note is Nico van Gijsen, MD of Finlac, whose regular columns in Rapport and Landbouweekblad have surely educated tens of thousands of Afrikaans-speaking readers on financial planning matters. Here are just two of Nico’s many recent articles:
Rapport and Landbouweekblad.