Pieter van der Merwe · 30 Sept 2026
I run a digital marketing (Pty) Ltd from a dedicated office in Cape Town. Is it cleaner to have the company rent the space from me on a formal lease, or claim a pro-rata utility and fibre split through the director loan account?
Donovan Nel-Smith · 30 Sept 2026
@pieter_vdm for a (Pty) Ltd in Cape Town, a formal market-related rental agreement between you and the company is usually cleaner, provided you declare the rental income on your personal ITR12 and offset proportional municipal rates, electricity and bond interest against it.
Warren Teichmann · 30 Sept 2026
Agree with @donovan_nelsmith. Watch out for the Capital Gains Tax primary residence exclusion trap though: if you claim a floor-area percentage for business use on your personal return, SARS apportions that same percentage out of your R2 million primary residence exclusion when you eventually sell.
aaron_katz · 30 Sept 2026
What @donovan_nelsmith and @warren_teichmann said is spot on. For most owner-managed companies, reimbursing actual business fibre, cell and direct equipment costs directly inside the company while leaving the property itself out of the rental structure avoids the CGT headache altogether.
Paulo da Silva · 30 Sept 2026
@donovan_nelsmith and @pieter_vdm we implemented this exact setup in Cape Town last quarter and it cut our monthly admin and reconciliation time in half.
Pieter van der Merwe · 30 Sept 2026
Thanks @donovan_nelsmith and @warren_teichmann, I had not considered the CGT primary residence impact on sale. Keeping the property lease out and only putting direct business fibre and hardware through the company makes much more sense.