In terms of the South African controlled foreign company ("CFC") legislation contained in section 9D of the Income Tax Act, 58 of 1962 (the "Act"), where South African residents directly or indirectly hold more than 50% of the total participation rights (essentially, the right to participate in the benefits of the rights attaching to a share) in a foreign company, a proportional amount of the “net income” of that foreign company (as a CFC) will be included in the income of those residents ...
Is the current international tax focus on base erosion and profit shifting (“BEPS”) relevant for tax-exempt pension funds? In particular, should the trustees and/or administrators of pension funds take note of the finalisation by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) of the 15 point action plan to address BEPS? Both of these questions should be answered “yes” by South African pension funds that invest outside of the country ...
With tax litigation becoming more prevalent in recent years, taxpayers are now faced with new issues.One such issue is: when and to what extent will documents bearing an electronic signature be acceptable under the relevant tax legislation?In this regard, section 255(2) of the Tax Administration Act No ...
On 15 April 2016, the Minister of Mineral Resources published the draft Reviewed Broad Based Black-Economic Empowerment Charter for the South African Mining and Minerals Industry 2016 (“the draft reviewed Mining Charter”) for public comment, addressing among other issues, the targets to be met by the mining industry in respect of the housing and living conditions of mine workers ...
A large percentage of closely held businesses restrict or even prohibit the owners’ ability to transfer their equity interests. Often these restrictions require the owner to sell the equity back to the entity or the other owners at a formula value, for example, book value, that is not anticipated to be a true fair market value. These and other permanent restrictions on equity interests are called nonlapse restrictions because by their terms they never go away or “lapse ...
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 ...
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) ...
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“) ...
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 ...
Generally when a successful business is acquired, whether by an asset acquisition or an equity acquisition, the assets will includeboth tangible and intangible property. When an entity conducting a business is liquidated, the tangible and intangible assets of the entity are distributed to the owners. Often, one very valuable intangible that does not appear on the balance sheet is goodwill ...
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) ...
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 ...
After more than a four months and a Phase II (in-depth) investigation, the Competition Commission gave conditional approval, to Sunoko's acquisition of the Star Šecer company and its subsidiary Te-To - the owner of the sugar factory in Senta. No divestments have been required from Sunoko. The ruling presents the finale of one of the most complicated merger cases in Serbia thus far and Karanovic & Nikolic is proud to have been advising MK Group throughout the process ...
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 ...
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 ...
The Israeli Tax Authority (the "ITA") has recently published a draft circular ("Draft Circular") on the tax treatment of holdback payments and reverse vesting mechanism in the context of merger and acquisition transactions. According to the Draft Circular, subject to certain conditions as will detail below, the sale of shares to which holdback payments and reverse vesting mechanisms apply would be subject to a capital gains tax rate of 25% (30% in case of controlling shareholders) ...
