Retirement annuities deduction when you have provident fund already

I have a Liberty RA that I contribute about R1000 pm with annual increases of 15%.
I also contribute about 12% of my salary to our company's provident fund.
Does anyone know the percentage or amount that I can claim when filing my tax returns this year? Is it still worthwhile to have an RA given this scenario? How do I actually find out if my RA is performing should I speak to my financial advisor? I'm currently earning about R22k pm before deduction .

I think the tax benefit of contributions to an RA depends on how much of your salary is counted as "pensionable".

Since you are with Liberty, I believe you can check out the "performance" of your RA by visiting https://www.blueprintonline.co.za/public/BPOPublic/.

It's a horrid system and if I had known how pathetic it was, I probably would not have signed up with Liberty in the first place. For example, a system that allows me to check the values of my RA historically would have been nice.

Thanks, I have used that site but I don't know how to interpret the info there.
I copied what the site says and pasted below, from this can it be seen how it is performing, I don't know what the data below shows.

Your Investment is split between these Funds
....................................................Buying | Selling | % of Total |Rand Val | Num of Units
RA LA EXCEL MANAGED......................163.863| 163.863| 39.94 | 5493.86| 3352.7132
RA LA CORONATION BALANCED PLUS....5635.34| 5635.34| 30.18 | 4151.92| 73.6764
RA LA ALLAN GRAY BALANCED.............5650.28| 5650.28| 29.88 | 4110.37| 72.7463

Total Investment Value as at 13756.15
08/03/2011

Gross Death Value 13800.00
Current Values as at 08/03/2011

Illustrative Maturity Value 35645613.00 at 01/05/2047

deekay said:

I have a Liberty RA that I contribute about R1000 pm with annual increases of 15%.
I also contribute about 12% of my salary to our company's provident fund.
Does anyone know the percentage or amount that I can claim when filing my tax returns this year? Is it still worthwhile to have an RA given this scenario? How do I actually find out if my RA is performing should I speak to my financial advisor? I'm currently earning about R22k pm before deduction .

Click to expand...

lol...

1. Deductions to provident fund are not deductible.
2. Deductions to RA are limited to:
i) R3500 less amounts allowed as pension deduction
ii) R1750
iii) 7.50% of non pensionable income i.e. total income before this deduction less your annual salary and bonus.

Whichever is the greatest of the 3 options. Obviously, this total is limited to actual contributions paid and any undeducted amounts may be carried forward to the following year as far as i know.

There is a systematic approach to follow when calculating tax payable.

1. Put all income in
2. Get a sub total
3. then calculate pension deduction
4. get a sub total
5. calculate RAF
6. get a sub total
7. calculate capital gains
8. get a sub total
9. calculate medical deductions
- two parts to this calculation
10. get a sub total
11. calculate donations deductible
- limited to 10% of 10 above or annual exclusion of R100 000
12... calculate total and calculate tax payable

I just get my tax back on R3500 as that is the maximum amount that they allowed to be claimed I think. Even though I contribute more than that.

Great stuff thanks.