Citylife Business

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFEBUSINESS Editor

One of the biggest headaches for small businesses is administration, particularly when it comes to tax compliance matters. This problem is especially mostly prevalent among the creative and cultural sector in this country as creatives being who they are – creatives tend to spend more time doing what they do best, which is to create and less about administration.

It is understandable, but proper administration is an absolute necessity for businesses in the cultural and creative sector especially because the creative and cultural sector in South Africa pretty much depends on funding from government as well as sponsorship from the corporate sector through either their corporate social responsibility or marketing departments. Either way, creative entrepreneurs need to know that either government or corporate sponsors often want to get involved in funding or sponsorship with an entity that is run smoothly, including being tax compliant.

This is where accountant Mxolisi Sehoole of Sehoole and Associates comes in, offering accounting and tax services to the creative sector. His company has been offering this service for years now, and his services are in high demand especially among the visual art sector for both individual artists and businesses that are registered as companies.

“No matter how small your business is, you need to submit annual returns to the South African Revenue Services as this is a legal obligation all businesses must adhere to. However to make it easier for businesses and individual in the creative sector, we provide administration services to such businesses, including generating monthly financial reports. This way not only does this process assist when it comes to filing annual returns, but it also assists when it comes to identifying tax deductable expenses for the business,” explained Sehoole to CITYLIFEBUSINESS during an interview held at a popular Melville Coffee shop last week.

Sehoole has been providing these services to the creative sector for quite a while now, and in their books, they have leading artists in the visual art part of the creative and cultural sector. His clients include leading names in the visual art sector such as Blessing Ngobeni Thonton Kabeya, Lady Skollie, Themba Khumalo and LL Editions, to name but just a few names among his clinets.

His services are much-sought after in the creative sector, and you will often meet him at art events such as exhibitions openings, art fairs, such as Investec Cape Town Art fair, Latitudes Art Fair or Turbine Art Fair where he interact with artists, networking and making them aware of the services he can offer them while they concentrate in creative work. In other words the services the University of Johannesburg accounting graduate offer to the creative sector has removed one of the pains bedevilling this sector, which is tax compliance issues. Many an artist has lost out on government funding from arts agencies simply because they find themselves on the wrong side of compliance.

Now going forward, in the next two, we are repositioning the business by expanding into the music sector of the cultural and creative industry as we have realised that there is a gap there as musicians and other players in the music sector, also struggle when it comes to administration in general and tax matters in particular,” he explained.

Besides offering these services, Sehoole also offers financial management workshops to organisations and artists. On June 29, 2024, Sehoole in collaboration with the Dramatic Arts and Literary Organisation (DALRO) will hold a financial management workshop with artists at DALRO’s offices in Bramely, Johannesburg.” We expect about 40 visual artists to be part of that workshop,” he said.

.Mxolisi Sehoole can be contacted at info@sehoole.co.za.