What is Estate Duty?
Estate Duy is a tax which is levied on your total net estate. This is your gross assets, less your liabilities, abatements and exemptions, and the remaining value over R3.5 million will be taxed at a flat 20% rate. However if you have a spouse (this could be the person you are legally or traditionally married to, or even a person you have a permanent relationship with) there is a clause in the estate duty act, that permits that anything you leave to your spouse is given as a 4q deduction, removing this value from your estate, and transferred free of estate duty to your spouse. If you did not use any of your R3,5 million abatement, then your full R3.5 million rand which is not estate dutiable not rolls over to your spouse, and only on their death is estate duty payable on both estates. This gives spouses a R7 million value which will be free of estate duty. Any amounts exceeding this, will then be taxed at 20%. Also remember that on death Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is also levied based on
