Are you thinking of smart ways to spend your next tax refund?

Instead of buying a new watch or putting a bigger window in the study, you can give yourself a gift in the form of an even bigger tax refund with a retirement investment.

How to get a bigger tax refund on your retirement annuity

1. Take advantage of tax deductions on your regular contributions

We want you to make yourself rich by “stealing” from yourself. Ha! The easy way to do this is to get a tax refund. If you invest in a retirement annuity, the size of your refund depends on how much tax you pay on your income. If you invest R1 000 and your tax rate is 25%, you get a full 25% back, and your investment of R1 000 “costs” you only R750. This is not a shabby gift to yourself. If you reinvest the refund, this “gift” becomes even bigger the following year.

2. Add a once-off contribution to top up your retirement annuity

Savvy investors try to put as much money as possible into their retirement annuities, every year to get the biggest possible refund. That is why they, apart from their monthly contributions, also add once-off contributions to their retirement annuities before the end of the tax year. The limits to how much you can invest every year kick in only at a very high level.