With two tax year-ends since the launch of tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs) in South Africa, many advisors and clients are still debating the best way to maximise the tax benefits of TFSAs. What has not helped much is that most product providers, including life companies, banks, unit trust management companies and LISP investment platforms, have jumped on the bandwagon and launched TFSAs over the past two years. This proliferation of TFSA product options, with the accompanying wave of good-news marketing material, has left many investors and advisors wondering how best to utilise a TFSA as one of a number of tax-efficient savings tools.

In this article we will share feedback we have received when discussing this problem with financial advisors, and highlight the implications of some of the different options available to investors.

1. A TFSA is not the only available tax-efficient savings option

The media hype about TFSAs appears to have taken people’s eyes off the fact that the first savings priority for any investor should still be their contribution to a registered retirement fund (either through their employer or via a retirement annuity). As a rule of thumb, investors should first provide for an adequate contribution to their retirement fund before taking out a TFSA. The South African Revenue Service recently increased income tax deductions available for retirement fund contributions. The potential compounded tax savings from a client’s contributions to a retirement fund early on in their career dwarfs the tax benefits of a TFSA.

Secondly, investors should remember to use their annual tax-free interest exemption (currently R23 800 for individuals under age 65). At current money market rates of nearly 8%, and various other income funds offering close to 9% p.a., an investor in South Africa can keep approximately R300 000 in a fixed income fund before paying any tax on the interest earned. Ideally, this allowance should be used to set up an investor’s emergency cash pool.

2. The tax benefits of TFSAs compound exponentially over time

When TFSAs were originally launched, many investors and advisors underestimated the extent to which the tax benefits on TFSAs would compound over time. This was because a TFSA contribution is not tax-deductible upfront like a retirement fund contribution, which makes it difficult to calculate the value of the tax benefit in rands and cents.

In addition, the limits placed on the lifetime TFSA contributions for an investor has the effect of further delaying the real tax benefit to the time when the investor has used their full lifetime contribution allowance.

These points are best illustrated by an example. In Figure 1 we project a TFSA’s fund values over a twenty year period based on the following assumptions:

• An investor contributes the maximum annual amount of R33 000 and this limit is never increased by Treasury.
• The R500 000 lifetime limit is never increased, and contributions cease when this limit is reached.
• Assume a 10% p.a. investment return and inflation of 6% p.a.
• Further assume a roughly 50/50 split in investment return between interest and capital gain, resulting in an effective combined tax rate of 30% on total investment returns.

Figure 1: TFSA value projection split between contributions and investment return

From Figure 1 there are three points to note:

From a tax benefit perspective, it appears to not make sense for an investor to utilise a TFSA for an investment horizon of shorter than five years. This picture changes dramatically though after ten years due to the well-known compounding effect of long-term investment returns.

3. Lifetime TFSA contribution limits are precious – don’t waste them

Current TFSA product rules, as set out by Treasury, do not allow an investor to recover any part of the lifetime TFSA contribution limit should they need to dip into the TFSA assets to fund an emergency expense. Every time an investor uses part of their TFSA contribution allowance, that allowance is gone forever.

Any redemptions from a TFSA therefore waste part of an investor’s lifetime contribution allowance – ideally something to be avoided.

4. Investment portfolios should be consistent with investment horizon

A final point to discuss is what represents the ideal investment portfolio for a TFSA. There should be two key considerations when deciding on an appropriate investment portfolio:

• As highlighted above, TFSA investments should be ten-year or longer investments, and portfolios should reflect this reality.
• Since TFSAs do not attract income tax or CGT, the risk/return characteristics of TFSA portfolios are neutral to whether returns come from capital gain, interest or dividends.

One way to simplify this problem is to evaluate different investment strategies with reference to a long-term return and volatility measure, and see how they stack up. In Figure 2 we do exactly that, highlighting the ten-year annualised returns and volatility statistics for a number of potential TFSA investment options.

Figure 2: Fifteen-year annualised return/volatility for a number of investment options

Source: Morningstar Direct, as at 31 August 2017. Performance figures are based on a lump sum investment, NAV to NAV, net of fees. Highest and lowest annualised returns since inception of the Investec Opportunity, Investec Equity and Investec STeFI Plus funds (12-month rolling performance figures) are: 43.8% and -15.7%; 65.8% and -34.8%; 13.8% and 4.2%, respectively. The total expense ratio of the Investec Opportunity, Investec Equity and Investec STeFI Plus funds (A class) are: 1.84%, 1.99% and 0.71%, respectively. Funds shown are for illustrative purposes only and are not necessarily the classes available on the IMS TFSA platform.

Figure 2 illustrates what most of us already know intuitively – more conservative portfolio choices merely reduce the likely long-term investment returns without really adding anything. Similarly, fixed income investments, while they might appear attractive as they attempt to maximise the value of the tax saving, will also disappoint in terms of their total long-term investment returns.

It seems that a good starting point for most TFSA investors is to have a look at South African unit trust funds from the “ASISA Domestic Multi-Asset: High Equity” or similar category. These funds have historically produced very attractive long-term risk return trade-offs, and work even better when tax does not affect the structure of the investment decision.

One can comfortably move even higher up the risk curve, especially for longer investment horizons. The most commonly selected investment option for the Investec IMS TFSA, for example, has been the Investec Global Franchise Feeder Fund.

Conclusion

TFSAs are a great initiative from government to encourage savings in South Africa, and they are important tools for a financial advisor. However, it is important to set them up correctly as long-term investments in order to maximise the value of the client’s lifetime tax benefit.