A case study of an RSM South Africa corporate tax client

What is a standard corporate tax client for the RSM South Africa tax team?

This is a difficult question to answer as we do not really have a standard client.

Every client is unique. This may come across as a cliché, but it’s absolutely true.

Our client base is extremely diverse in nature, size and industry with clients that are small owner managed through to large international groups, listed or not, and anything in between.

But to try and provide some insight into how we operate with our corporate tax clients, let’s assume we are looking at a large South African subsidiary of an internationally active group of companies.

Generally, our first introduction into clients of this nature would be to assist with initial tax registrations for VAT, Payroll Taxes and Customs and Excise as they start their journey of investing into South Africa.

From here we  would then perform the base tax compliance work which is our “daily bread and butter”.

As a starting point each client is allocated a Director, Tax Manager and Tax Compliance Officer who take responsibility for that client’s tax compliance affairs.

When tax returns, provisional tax returns or required correspondence with South African Revenue Services (“SARS”) need to be dealt with, these three individuals take sole responsibility for that client’s affairs.

They are also the only individuals that our clients need to deal with on an ongoing basis.

We try to minimise as much as possible the points of contact clients need to utilise, so that this enables us to develop client knowledge and build strong relationships.

In every client engagement, even at a tax compliance level, there is significant Director and Tax Manager involvement, although this is not always apparent to our clients.

This places us in a unique position where we are able to add value in identifying client specific needs on an ongoing basis, even outside the tax environment, and then assisting those clients, whether it be through the tax team or through some of our other service lines.

Once we move past regular tax compliance, we will also assist our clients with dispute resolution and SARS queries and information requests. The majority of this is done through our automatic interface with SARS, which enables ongoing monitoring to take place to ensure nothing is missed.  

This is really the base level service offering but in providing this service we are then able to assist a client of this nature with a complete consulting package which involves corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, tax due diligence, VAT, Payroll Taxes, international taxation and transfer pricing where required.

So, in our example of a large subsidiary of an internationally active group, we would often provide tax compliance and international tax consulting services together with assistance in the preparation of contemporaneous transfer pricing documentation.

We might also be requested to assist with personal tax return filings for Directors or alternatively, given this is an internationally active client, assist with both compliance and advisory work specific to expatriate employees which can be highly complex.

Where our clients do get involved in acquisitions, disposals or corporate restructuring transactions, we are then able to step in and provided tax due diligence, tax structuring advice and in, conjunction with our Legal Advisory Team, a comprehensive legal service offering covering all aspects of these types of commercial transactions including foreign exchange regulations and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment scenarios.

In addition, when providing services to our corporate tax clients we are, as an organisation, able to go far beyond even these services, with comprehensive service offerings in Audit and Assurance, Legal Advisory, Risk Advisory, Company Secretarial and Accounting & Finance Outsourcing.

Importantly for us as an organisation, although the above example considers an international type of scenario, our base philosophy remains the same with all of our clients.

No matter how large or small we aim to limit initial points of contact, have high levels of Director and Tax Manager involvement and, as a result, we try to build relationships we hope will last a lifetime.

John Jones
Director Corporate Tax 

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