Integritax, SAICA’s monthly tax newsletter, came about as a result of the efforts of the first Project Director: Tax, the late Len Norval, wanting to start a Tax Faculty in the early 1990s, for SAICA members, along the lines of a similar offering by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. A separate fee would be payable for this service by interested members. The Board did not approve the formation of the Tax Faculty but gave its support to the publication of a bi-monthly tax newsletter, available to those members that indicated they wished to receive it.
Sponsorship for the printing of the newsletter was initially provided by Standard Bank, and later by Investec. Following responses received from our members, the first issue of Integritax was published in March 1994 and was sent to over 8000 members, out of a total membership of 15000. The next issue was in June 1994, then August 1994 and every two months thereafter. These issues were limited to 12 pages each. The first editorial panel consisted of Graham Richardson (chairman), Prof Hennie Coetzee, Kent Karro, Mark Crisp and Prof Kevin Mitchell. The newsletter was well received and led to the publication of an annual Tax Handbook, which was published after the national budget speech.
The popularity of Integritax continued to grow but unfortunately in 1998, in an effort to continue bringing the latest tax news to our members, a decision was taken to publish Integritax electronically without charge.
Since then, the newsletter has been published on a monthly basis. The length of the monthly newsletter is usually far longer than the 12 printed pages edition previously published every two months. This is a clear indication of the increased activity in the field of tax during the past fifteen years. October 2009 is our 117th edition.
A new development has been to allow readers of Integritax to gain professional CPD points if they answer correctly the questions set on the published articles.
It would be inappropriate not to record our grateful thanks to the many firms of Chartered Accountants and Lawyers that regularly make their client newsletters available to us to enable us to choose the best and/or most suitable articles for publication in Integritax.
Finally our thanks go to the hardworking Integritax panel, which currently includes: Kent Karro (chairman), Prof. Kevin Mitchell, Prof Peter Surtees, Prof Jeniffer Roeleveld, Dr Beric Croome, Prof Lynette Olivier and Mr Afzal Khan.
Kent Karro (Chairman)
Kent is the managing partner of Horwath Zeller Karro, Cape Town and National Tax Partner for the four Horwath firms in South Africa. He has almost 40 years experience in the above areas of specialisation. Kent is a former chairman of the SAICA National Tax Committee.
Kevin Mitchell
Prof Kevin Mitchell founded the Mitchells’ Chartered Accountants Inc. (SA) in 1997, and has served on SAICA’s Taxation Committee and on the PAAB’s Education Requirements Committee. He is also co-author of an annual text book “Graded Questions on Income Tax”, which is prescribed at most learning institutions throughout southern Africa and is a regular contributor to various tax journals.
Peter Surtees
Professor Peter Surtees is a director at Deneys Reitz Tax Services in Cape Town. He writes widely on tax related topics both nationally and internationally. He presents the MCom (Taxation) course at UCT. In 2007 he was appointed as a member of the Tax Court; this is a State President’s appointment.
Jeniffer Roeleveld
Jeniffer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Accounting at the University of Cape Town. She is on the executive board of the South African Fiscal Association and a member of the SAICA National Tax committee.
Beric Croome
Dr Beric Croome is a Tax Executive at Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs. He previously served as the Chairman of the SAICA National Tax Committee (1999 – 2002). Prior to this he had also served as a member of the SAICA National Tax Committee.
Lynette Olivier
Lynette Olivier is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and Professor of Taxation in the department of Accounting at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Lynette is an internationally recognised author and co-author of several tax publications and is an experienced seminar speaker. Lynette is currently the anchor presenter of the UJ masters programme in South African and International Taxation and Higher Diploma in International Taxation.
Afzal Khan
Afzal completed his articles at PricewaterhouseCoopers and spent time as a manager in PwCs Corporate Finance, Internal Audit and Tax Departments. Afzal is also an academic and an accountant member to the Cape High Court. He is currently the Managing Partner at RAFT Consulting.
How to qualify for Integritax CPD
From March 2009, readers of Integritax have been able to earn verifiable CPD for reading the newsletter. All registered members of SAICA have the option of reading Integritax and answering questions drawn directly from specific articles to earn CPD hours. In total, Integritax allows you to log ten hours over a 12 month period, via a total of 10 Integritax issues and a maximum of one hour per issue.
All eligible articles will have a CPD logo attached to the article page. The logo will also stipulate the verifiable CPD minutes allocated to the article. If you read your newsletter online, an information block will identify the articles eligible for verifiable CPD, and also indicate the CPD minutes allocated to that article. Once you’ve read the eligible articles, log onto the SAICA website (www.saica.co.za) or click through directly from the Integritax website https://www.saica.co.za/integritax/. Although tax is a highly interpretive subject, it is important to note that Integritax questions will be marked strictly according to the information contained in the article.
It is also important to note that all Integritax verifiable CPD logs can only be made online.
