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Messages - andre

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31
Shares / Re: Bitcoins
« on: October 30, 2017, 03:10:58 pm »
Still going strong!
I expected a bit of a pullback after the fork - perhaps even close to $5200 again
Guess we'll see

32
Shares / !!
« on: October 20, 2017, 02:51:17 pm »
Just read the thread from beginning to end,
thanks Orca for your intimate and enlightening comments.. and i hope all is well with you and Mrs

I just did the same thing. Slow Friday in Cape Town..

Wow, what a roller coaster this year has been for you guys  ???
All the best for that full recovery!

33
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 19, 2017, 05:25:12 pm »
That being said - I'm not all that adverse to the idea of spending 91 days per year in SA.. 8)
I'm rather fond of the Cape summer and kite surfing is a passionate pastime. SA is still a bloody cheap destination compared to most of the world.

34
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 19, 2017, 05:16:43 pm »
Attached is the latest guide as from SARS website.
From what I can tell the definition is still the same.

Quote
2. RESIDENT
In principle, the first step in determining the normal tax liability of any natural person in South Africa is to establish whether or not that natural person is a “resident” as defined in section 1.
Two separate tests are applicable to determine whether or not a natural person is a resident, namely –
• the ordinarily resident test; and
• the physical presence test.

2.1 Ordinarily resident test
This concept means that a natural person is a resident if his or her permanent home, to which he or she will normally return, is in South Africa. A continuous physical presence is not a prerequisite to be ordinarily resident in South Africa.
The courts have held, in ascribing a meaning to the concept “ordinarily resident”, that it refers to, for example –
• living in a place with some degree of continuity, apart from accidental or temporary absence. If it is part of a person’s ordinary regular course of life to live in a particular place with a degree of permanence, he or she must be regarded as ordinarily resident;
• the place where his or her permanent place of abode is, where his or her belongings are stored, which he or she leaves for temporary absences and to which he or she regularly returns after these absences;
• a residence that is settled and certain and not temporary and casual; or
• where a person normally resides, apart from temporary or occasional absences.
A natural person, who becomes ordinarily resident in South Africa, will become a resident as from a specific date. It, therefore, follows that any income that is received by or accrued to that person from a source outside South Africa, before he or she becomes ordinarily resident in South Africa, will not be subject to tax in South Africa unless such person is regarded as a resident by virtue of the physical presence test (see 2.2).

2.2 Physical presence test
This concept is time-based and is only applicable to a natural person who was not at any stage during the relevant tax year ordinarily resident in South Africa. This test is based on the number of days during which a natural person is physically present in South Africa. It is important to note that a day includes a part of a day. Thus both the day of arrival and departure are included in the count. This test is also known as the day test or time rule. A day is regarded to start at 00:00, therefore, a person who arrives in South Africa at 23:55 would be regarded to be present in South Africa for a full day. However, any day that a person is in transit through South Africa between two places outside South Africa and that person does not formally enter South Africa through a port of entry, or at any other place as may be permitted by the Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs or the Minister of Home Affairs, is excluded in the count.
The physical presence test must be performed annually in order to determine whether the natural person concerned is a resident for the tax year under consideration. The test consists of three requirements, that is, the natural person must be physically present in South Africa for a period or periods exceeding – 2
i) 91 days in aggregate during the tax year under consideration;
ii) 91 days in aggregate during each of the five tax years preceding the tax year under consideration; and
iii) 915 days in aggregate during the above five preceding tax years.
A natural person has to meet all three requirements before he or she will be regarded a resident (refer to the attached diagram in Annexure A). A tax year starts on the first day of March of one year and ends on the last day of February of the subsequent year.
In terms of the physical presence test, a natural person who is not ordinarily resident in South Africa only becomes a resident for income tax purposes as from the first day (beginning) of the sixth tax year if he or she is physically present in South Africa for the periods as set out above. The purpose of the presence is irrelevant. A day is therefore counted even if the presence is as a result of a holiday, visiting friends, funeral etc.
A natural person, who is a resident by virtue of the physical presence test, ceases to be a resident if he or she is physically outside South Africa for a continuous period of at least 330 full days. The continuous period begins the day after the day on which he or she physically left South Africa. The natural person ceases to be a resident as from the day immediately after the day on which he or she left South Africa for a continuous period of at least 330 full days.

If you're not determined to be "ordinarily resident" as per 2.1 then the physical precence test applies as follow:






35
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 19, 2017, 02:36:25 pm »
I shudder to think what #andre will pay in Exit Tax. Only his primary home will escape some CGT.  :o

I'm still struggling with mine and have a cross border tax consultant working on it and will post the outcome.


For now it would be best for us to remain tax residents in SA and as we're not emigrating, in theory, we should still pass the test as "ordinarily residents" as SA is still our permanent abode no matter how long we're away for - as long as we still have financial ties in SA by owning property.


"Under South African law a resident is defined by the Income Tax Act, 1962, as either an individual who
meets the physical presence test OR an individual who is ordinarily resident in South Africa under South
African common law.

Ordinarily resident: A person will be considered to be ordinarily resident in South Africa, if South Africa
is the country to which that person will naturally and as a matter of course return to after his or her
wanderings. It could be described as that person’s usual or principal residence, or his or her real home"




36
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 19, 2017, 08:58:33 am »
For those interested - here's a spreadsheet I've built and shared recently with the  Fat Wallet guys that show the difference between investing in Rands vs investing in US Dollar due to the effect of inflation and CGT. Of course, you have to take into account the cost of getting funds offshore as well as back to ZAR which may affect the potential benefit. In my case, I don't plan on converting back to ZAR. (You can download it from attachments below and play with it - please point out my mistakes  :) )


37
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 18, 2017, 02:35:59 pm »
Thank you Andre for sharing and well done on the discipline to save as you have.

Have you been travelling the last number of years? i ask as full time travelling can have drawbacks. (missing family and friends etc)

Valid question. I guess we're just not that family oriented and the idea of not being around family doesn't bother us. We don't really have much family, to be honest, and once you reach a certain age and don't have kids true friends seem to be few and far between. My wife and I have traveled together yearly pretty much since we've met. Over the last 10 years, we've attempted to do a proper 4-week trip every year. We've had some longer trips as well on the odd occasion (8 weeks in the States, 10 weeks in Japan) but for the most of it around a month at a time. It does take a certain type of person to do this kind of traveling and dont think for a moment long-term travel is always a bed of roses. Travelling can be surprisingly tough at times.

I remember, up until a few years ago, we would get to a certain point towards the end of an active trip where you would feel - it's time - you're 'ready' to go home.
I haven't had that feeling in quite a while ..

38
Off topic / Re: Transferring money overseas, any tips?
« on: October 18, 2017, 09:58:18 am »
That's a really good deal. I've switched to using clickfx for all my transfers all the time now too. Nikita is also really easy to deal with. Maybe I should do a blog post called "Only idiots transfer money overseas using their banks"!

 :TU:
There's not a lot of info out there and it would be a great resource for anyone looking at the same.

39
Off topic / Re: Transferring money overseas, any tips?
« on: October 18, 2017, 09:53:31 am »
Thought you guys would be interested in some feedback.
Made a 300k transfer this week with ClickFX and this is how it stacked up as compared to SWIFT and Exchange4Free:


40
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 17, 2017, 04:50:02 pm »
Wow, what a great position to be in at your age, well done sir!

thanks but as said everything comes at a price or sacrifice. A bit of focus early on in life makes it oh so worth it now.
 >:( We really should be putting more effort into educating youngsters as to the power of compound interest. And what sacrifice is? Instant gratification is an illness of our time...
When my friends discuss the latest model XYZ car/bakkie/bike and think I'm nuts for driving a 20-year-old rust bucket I have to remind myself who will have the last laugh.

41
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 17, 2017, 04:32:26 pm »
Oh yes, forgot to add I have a little bit riding on some cryptos.
If Bitcoin goes beserk in 10 years from now perhaps all the above doesn't matter   8)  ;D

42
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 17, 2017, 04:20:15 pm »
In theory, as long as you don't establish tax ties in any country, you only need to escape the taxes of your home country. In South Africa that means don't spend more than 183 days inside SA and you won't pay tax unless you earn over R1 million.

...

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation

That list doesn't look too bad from my perspective :) Thanks for posting!

Our short-term strategy is not to be based ANYWHERE specific for any length of time. That's until the wanderlust runs out or we need a break. Even then we might just stick around an interesting spot for a couple of months to recharge the batteries and/or curb the spending  ;D

I'll give you guys a quick rundown of our situation:

We currently have 4x PROPERTIES - valued just over R9 mil in total. As it stands right now and we rent them ALL out it should provide an income (after expenses but before tax) of around R450k pa. Expenses accounted for include rates & municipal services, levies, insurance, maintenance as well as management fees. We’re not foreseeing any other local income so if we split this income our individual tax liability is around R29k per person per year (2017-18 tax tables)

Current (restricted access) RETIREMENT FUNDS total to around R2 mil and is made up of RA’s, Provident Funds and TFSAs. This will not provide any income in the short term and I have at least 10 years to go before I can get access to a third of it so, for now, I'm leaving it out of all calcs. I’m thinking to keep adding to our TFSA’s but I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea as there’s no tax benefit but at least one has access to it and can buy a low-cost ETF.  >:( The alternative would be to take the 2x33k and add to our RAs and cut personal tax by 2 x R9k per annum…... This might be a more sensible approach?
We’ll still have some local expenses such as Medical & Travel insurance,  Disability and Dread disease cover of around R60k per year.

Other LOCAL INVESTMENT (currently) of around R500k include some ETF’s. There’s no immediate income derived from these but it's all equity-based.
We’ve got some CASH saved up and have started moving funds offshore - over the next 12 months to hopefully grow our international portfolio to around R1 mil  - all invested in Euro-based ETF’s. My thinking though is to sell our primary property next year - which should free over R3 mil and move that offshore as well to add to the pot This would decrease our local rental income by around R160k and more than halve our tax liability (then only R13k per person p.a.). Obviously, we split all investments between us to reduce tax liability.

According to my cals if we then have this 2 x R2mil OFFSHORE invested in low-cost products with a predicted capital growth of 10% p.a and a 2% dividend yield we can draw a combined R240k p.a. Accounting for 7% inflation, 5% fiscal drag correction and of course a 7% annual increase in drawings, the capital would be DEPLETED in around 50 years.  Dividend Withholdings Tax is calculated at 20% but in theory, we might be able to pay less if our tax base remains in SA. This income in addition to the remaining rental totals to around R500k p.a. (after tax) which is more that we need at the moment.

The remaining properties are all in sought after areas of CT and should keep up with inflation at the very least and the rental income is a nice constant but far from the best income generator in my opinion. From my perspective, the capital is a dead loss to me when I’m dead so one should structure it to eventually deplete. However, I’m a bit hesitant to put all eggs into the equity basket.
 
Determining a long-term travel budget is difficult as one tends to spend less if you stop moving. To start with we’ll keep moving and adjust according to budget and energy. For now, I’m working on around $30k p.a. which should be more than adequate for the way we travel. We don’t need to draw from our investments for the first year or so as we should have at least R500k cash available after flogging our cars and household content.

That’s the theory anyway.  ;)
Help me out if I'm missing something major





43
Shares / Re: Investment Strategies for Nomads
« on: October 17, 2017, 03:02:01 pm »
Here another one for a bit of diversion from a fellow biker from Cape Town (Kamaya)
...

The truth is that for most, the nomadic journeys must occur in the mind or value must be accorded to random nocturnal sojourns around the suburb or the occasional walk through a park where as one watches one's dog piss against a carefully maintained shrub for which we pay the necessary levy taxes.  The complex strands of any family dynamic do not always allow for the freeist of spirits to take off on whims of self discovery. I have been into a few wildernesses without exiting my front door.



Kamanya as in Andrew Johnstone?
I've actually done the odd bit of riding with him back in the day. Mostly in places completely unsuitable for choice of bike - but fun none the less  :)
He's quite the gentleman - the thinking mans biker so to speak.


44
Shares / Re: Bitcoins
« on: October 11, 2017, 04:25:56 pm »
Yip - only way is up.
Ethereum is still struggling to recover but almost there.
The forecast for BTC was always $5k by the end of 2017.


45
Off topic / Re: Transferring money overseas, any tips?
« on: October 10, 2017, 08:54:20 am »
I ran a quick comparison between my banks Swift option vs ClickFX vs Exchange4Free
Minimum amount 100k as this is where Exchange4Free waives fees - the assumption is they offer 1% on midrate (as based on Patricks feedback but it's not verified).
On avg ClickFX offers around 0.75% on midmarket rate  with a fixed fee of R350










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