About Dr Mittner
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PHd qualification, UCT-Trained Researcher
Years in Financial Journalism
Top Performer at the Tax Faculty (630 CEU hours)
Expertise in most major tax challenges
How This Started
Thirty Years of Reading Between the Lines
MM Tax Services was founded in 2019 by Dr Maarten Mittner, after a gap he saw repeatedly over a long career in South African business and finance journalism. Taxpayers who could afford a large firm received specialist tax advice. Everyone else received compliance work and hoped for the best.
Dr Mittner began his journalistic career at Die Burger in 1983, then wrote for Rapport, Finansies en Tegniek, later Finweek, Beeld, the Financial Mail and Business Day covering markets, monetary policy, the Budget and the tax changes that followed, across more than three decades and several fundamental shifts in South African tax law.
That work demanded a particular skill: reading a tax amendment buried in a Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, understanding it, and explaining it to readers who needed to know what it meant by the following morning. Doing that for years builds an unusual way of thinking about tax starting from the taxpayer’s actual position and working outward, not from a form and working down.
Between the Numbers and the Law
Every engagement starts with the facts, not a recommendation. We start with your actual position, then work outward from there.
The Gap Between
Most taxpayers already have an accountant, and many have an attorney. Both are essential. In between sits work that requires dedicated tax expertise and that's precisely where MM Tax Services operates.
Direct or Alongside
We work with taxpayers directly, and we work alongside accountants and attorneys who need specialist tax input on a matter outside their normal scope. The existing relationship always continues undisturbed.
The Principle
No taxpayer should pay more tax than the law actually requires. A considered opinion, a properly argued objection, a defensible audit response these reward experience and punish guesswork.
How the practice works
MM Tax Services is deliberately not a large firm. Work is not passed to a junior once the engagement is signed. The person who assesses your matter is the person who handles it, and the person you speak to when you phone.
The practice operates outside the corporate environment by design. That keeps fees proportionate to the work, keeps decisions quick, and means individuals, professionals and smaller businesses get the level of attention that would ordinarily be reserved for a corporate client. It also means we will say when a matter is not worth pursuing. An honest assessment that saves you a pointless dispute is more valuable than a fee earned on one.
Three principles run through every engagement:
01
Never overpay on tax
Tax is a legal obligation. Overpaying it is not whether through an unchallenged assessment or an unclaimed deduction. We work firmly on the right side of the line between planning and evasion.
02
Position before advice
No recommendation is made until the facts are properly established sometimes that means the first engagement is spent reconstructing what actually happened, not acting on assumptions.
03
Reliable Advice
Advice that cannot be understood cannot be acted on. Findings are set out in plain language, with the legal basis stated so it can be checked, and with the practical consequences spelled out.
Discuss your matter directly
Every tax matter turns on its own facts. The most useful first step is a conversation in which you set out the position and receive an honest view of what can be done.