Streets named after a country’s heroes and heroines can be a hotly contested and emotive issue, especially in a country such as South Africa, with its colonial and apartheid past. This was illustrated in the recent Constitutional Court case of City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality v AfriForum and Another (the “AfriForum case”), which not only dealt with this sensitive topic, but also clarified an important legal issue – whether an interim interdict can be appealed ...
It is common practice for suppliers to deliver the goods that they supply at the premises of their customers on the customer’s request. The suppliers then either deliver the goods themselves or they contract the services of third parties to deliver the goods on their behalf, for which they charge a delivery fee ...
The Draft Taxation Laws Amendment Bill of 2016 was released for public comment on Friday 8 July (the “2016 TLAB”). It proposes certain amendments to the rules currently contained in the Income Tax Act No. 58 of 1962 (the “Act”) dealing with employee-based incentive plans ...
general principles Legal professional privilege applies to communications between a client and legal advisor, where the legal advisor is acting in a professional capacity and is consulted in confidence for the purpose of the client obtaining legal advice (other than advice facilitating crime or fraud), and where legal professional privilege is claimed by that client ...
In October 2015, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) published its final reports on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) project, including the final report on BEPS Action 13, Transfer Pricing and Country-by-Country Reporting(“Action 13 Report”) ...
The Taxation Laws Amendment Bill 2016 has been released for public comment. It introduces various interesting amendments to South Africa’s tax law, which include the following: Use of trusts In circumstances where an interest-free loan has been advanced to a trust by a connected person (which includes a beneficiary or a relative of a beneficiary), it is proposed that a market-related rate of interest (currently 8%) is deemed to be paid on that loan ...
One of the key elements addressed in the Draft Reviewed Broad Based Black-Economic Empowerment (“BBBEE”) Charter for the South African Mining and Minerals Industry, 2016 (the “draft reviewed Mining Charter”) is the issue of ownership. The Department of Mineral Resources (“DMR”) seeks to achieve the ownership requirement through broad-based employee share option plans (“ESOPs”), which are likely to have an impact on both mining companies and their employees from a tax perspective ...
On July 5, 2016 the Chilean Congress enacted Law No. 20,931 (“Anti-crime Agenda”), strengthening the prosecution of robbery, burglary, theft and willfully or negligently receiving or possessing stolen goods. The Chilean Criminal Code sanctions any individual who knowingly or negligently possesses, transports, buys, converts or trades goods proceeding from theft, robbery, embezzlement and/or cattle theft. Negligent behavior can also be prosecuted ...
TAXPAYER REGIME A REGIME B METHOD FOR EXERCISING THE OPTION Public Corporations, Closed Corporations and “Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones”. N/A Mandatory regime. N/A Individual Companies and Individual Limited Liability Companies. Applicable provided the owner of the company is: (i)an individual domiciled or resident in Chile; and/or (ii)an individual or entity domiciled or resident abroad (together as “Final Taxpayers) ...
As per Notification No. 039 issued by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) on 21 July 2016, a working group consisting of representatives from both the General Department of Taxation (GDT) and the Phnom Penh Municipality will begin to collect data from all enterprises in Phnom Penh from August 2016 onwards. Representatives of the working group will physically visit all enterprises in Phnom Penh for the purpose of: 1. Gathering the enterprise’s statistics; 2 ...
In our blog post from July 25, 2016 we highlighted the provincial government’s introduction (effective August 2, 2016) of the new 15% property transfer tax (the “Foreign Entity Tax“) on foreign buyers of residential property in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (“Metro Vancouver“). The Foreign Entity Tax has been introduced by way of an amendment to the Property Transfer Tax Act (British Columbia) (the “Act“) ...
Allied Irish Bank PLC -v- Moloney & anor [2016] IEHC 346 Twomey J, 20 June 2016, concerned an application by Allied Irish Bank (AIB) for summary judgment in the sum of €10.8m. The defendants contested the application claiming that they had a binding oral agreement with AIB, whereby it was agreed that the defendants would sell the properties charged to AIB, and the outstanding loan would be written off. The fact of the borrowings was not disputed ...
When the wording of a construction-related guarantee is ambiguous, the intention of the parties involved is key in determining its true nature. This was highlighted in a recent Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) judgment, which found that the best way to determine the parties’ intention was to look at all relevant facts ...
What is BEPS?Much has been said in both professional and commercial circles on the imminent introduction in Hong Kong of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) regime for the automatic exchange of tax information between participating jurisdictions. There is, however, a much lesser awareness of the commitments undertaken by the Government to the new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standard to combat base erosion and profits shifting (BEPS) ...
A number of South African individuals, trusts and companies feature in the recent data leak involving clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca ...
There has been a rapid expansion of the crowdfunding industry during the last couple of years where businesses and entrepreneurs use crowdfunding platforms to promote their business ideas and to obtain funding from the public to finance their ventures ...
On 20 June 2016, the South African National Treasury published draft Carbon Offsets Regulations (“draft regulations”), intended as a component of the proposed carbon tax. The draft regulations mark the next step in the process of bringing the carbon tax into operation by early 2017 ...
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”)/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) Project identified 15 actions based on the following three key themes, being: · the introduction of coherence in the domestic rules that affect cross-border activities; · the reinforcement of substance requirements in the existing international standards; and · the improvement of transparency and certainty ...
It is the long-standing practice of traders and service providers to grant customers extended payment terms for the goods or services they supply as a means to enhance turnover. Where the credit provided is interest-free, the question that arises is whether the provision of such credit impacts on the entitlement of the supplier to claim input tax for value added tax (“VAT”) purposes ...
Dear All, ALRUD Law Firm hereby informs that the amendments introduced to Arbitrazh procedural code in accordance with Federal law as of 02 March 2016 No. 47-FZ “On the amendments to APK RF” (hereinafter referred to as – “Law”) will come into effect on 01 July 2016. The Law remains in line with the general trend on reduction of arbitrazh (state commercial) courts workload and speeding up arbitrazh proceedings ...
By a judgment of 24 May 2016 in the MT Højgaard/Züblin case (Case C-369/14), the Court of Justice of the European Union has pronounced on the possibilities of changing the identity or the composition of a preselected entity during an award procedure. The case was a result of E ...
In 2014 and 2015, ENSafrica published two articles on the “most favoured nation clause” contained in article 10(10) of the protocol (“2008 Netherlands Protocol”) issued under the Netherlands/South Africa (“SA”) double tax agreement (“Netherlands/SA DTA”) ...
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”), which established certain guidelines and principles regarding the claiming of input tax for value added tax (“VAT”) purposes in the Commissioner for South African Revenue Services v De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd (503/11) (1 June 2012) case may have far-reaching consequences for the private equity and venture capital industry ...
