1,720,962 research outputs found
Grounds for allowing a tax deduction for employee share incentives
Get PDFShare-based payments have become a popular form of employee remuneration, largely due to its potential to address the agency problem, and are especially effective when made to senior employees. Accounting standards require companies to report share-based payments made to employees as expenses in their financial statements, but extant South African tax legislation does not permit a deduction, where shares are awarded, to serve as incentives for senior employees. This is due to the fact that the courts do not view the issue of a companys own shares as expenditure. South African tax legislation presently contains a special tax deduction for shares awarded to employees, but this provisions restrictive requirements and low monetary limit is inadequate where the intention is to provide adequate incentives to senior employees in order to address the agency problem. The objective of this paper is to evaluate whether sufficient grounds exist, based on the principles of sound tax policy, for the legislature to enact a special tax deduction for share-based payments, that would serve as an adequate incentive to senior employees. The evaluation found that the current tax position infringes upon several principles of sound tax policy and that an intervention by the legislature is required
An Analysis Of The Risks Associated With Estate Duty In Retaining Control Over Trust Assets
Get PDFThe use of trusts to minimise estate duty and other taxes has recently come under scrutiny from government. The DTC has proposed amendments to income tax legislation to serve as a deterrent against using trusts to avoid estate duty. Such amendments will, however, only discourage the use of trusts if the trust assets generate a significant amount of income and the donor of the assets or the beneficiaries of the trust have little or no other taxable income.The objective of this paper is to identify the estate duty risks associated with retaining control over trust assets. It was concluded that trust assets are only at risk of being included as deemed property in the estate of a deceased person where such person had, immediately prior to death, the legal competence to dispose of such property for the benefit of himself or his estate and that the conduct of the planner was not a relevant consideration in determining whether trust assets could be deemed property. However, the conduct of the estate planner with respect to trust assets could potentially lead to the inclusion of the property as actual property in his estate, particularly in circumstances where the trust was his alter ego and trust property was treated as his own, where the trust arrangement is regarded as simulated or where there was no intention to create a trust
An analysis of the risks associated with estate duty in retaining control over trust assets
Get PDFMCom (South African and International Taxation), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2016The use of trusts to minimise estate duty and other taxes has recently come under scrutiny from
government. The DTC has proposed amendments to income tax legislation to serve as a
deterrent against using trusts to avoid estate duty. Such amendments will, however, only
discourage the use of trusts if the trust assets generate a significant amount of income and the
donor of the assets or the beneficiaries of the trust have little or no other taxable income.
The objective of this paper is to identify the estate duty risks associated with retaining control
over trust assets. It was concluded that trust assets are only at risk of being included as deemed
property in the estate of a deceased person where such person had, immediately prior to death,
the legal competence to dispose of such property for the benefit of himself or his estate and that
the conduct of the planner was not a relevant consideration in determining whether trust assets
could be deemed property. However, the conduct of the estate planner with respect to trust
assets could potentially lead to the inclusion of the property as actual property in his estate,
particularly in circumstances where the trust was his alter ego and trust property was treated as
his own.Master
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
An evaluation of South Africa's approach to tax avoidance through dividend stripping
Get PDFMCom (Taxation), North-West University, Potchefstroom CampusDividend stripping is a form of tax avoidance, a prevalent and universal problem in tax systems, originating from unavoidable tax law inconsistencies exploited by taxpayers. It entails the extraction of value from shares held in a target company by effectively selling the shares through tax-exempt dividends. These schemes involve millions of Rands and could potentially erode the South African tax base. South Africa has enacted specific dividend stripping rules to counteract this practice. Extraordinary tax-exempt pre-sale dividends accrued or received in respect of disposed target company shares will be taxable in the shareholder’s hands as either income, for shares held as trading stock, or as proceeds, for shares held as capital assets. Furthermore, capital losses arising on the disposal of shares after receiving extraordinary tax-exempt dividends are disregarded to a certain extent. The specific dividend stripping rules of South Africa are in line with the established principle in Commissioner for Inland Revenue v Nemojim (Pty) Ltd (1983) that any such dividends are sine qua non to the transaction’s profitability. General anti-avoidance provisions are also available to serve as a safety-net if the specific dividend stripping rules fail to curtail the tax avoidance and the South African Revenue Service is not precluded from applying this statutory mechanism merely because specific rules exist. The anti-dividend stripping provisions however continue to expand within the South African tax law, but time and again, it is circumvented by more aggressive and costly substitute dividend stripping schemes in reaction thereto. In the light of these recurrent amendments the difficult question arises as to whether South Africa’s approach to tax avoidance through dividend stripping is appropriate, robust and inclusive of all permutations of dividend stripping, or whether it is too restrictive and unnecessarily aggravating for commercial transactions. New Zealand and Australia also apply specific dividend stripping rules and general anti-avoidance provisions to target the practice of dividend stripping. An international comparison to the approaches these countries follow, the rationale behind it and the responsiveness of the legislature to abusive schemes addresses South Africa’s predicament in this regard. South Africa’s approach to tax avoidance through dividend stripping focusses on the specific inclusion of all permutations of dividend stripping transactions but is unnecessarily aggravating when compared to New Zealand and Australia. Although appropriate to some extent, the balance between applying both specific rules and general principles, as well as an optimal trade-off between the fundamental principles of taxation are lacking in a South African context.Master
Exploring grounds for allowing an input tax deduction on the acquisition of double-cab delivery vehicles
Get PDFMCom (Taxation), North-West University, Potchefstroom CampusIn South Africa, enterprises that are registered for value-added tax (VAT), are generally precluded
from claiming VAT on the acquisition of double cab light delivery vehicles (LDVs), despite using
such vehicles for legitimate business purposes. Such enterprises are often forced to use double
cab LDVs by other legislation, most notably health and safety statutes. Enterprises that have
challenged this inequitable position through the court system, have been unsuccessful as the
underlying legislation has limited regard for the intended use of the double cab LDVs and rather
focuses on the construction of the vehicle. This study set out to determine whether grounds exist
for allowing an input tax deduction on the acquisition of double cab light delivery vehicles, based
on the principle of tax equity. To achieve this, this study analysed the reasoning of the legislature
in disallowing an input tax deduction on motor cars, what is deemed to be a motor car, judicial
decisions on motor cars and other defined terms and other legislation that enterprises should
adhere to (which drives the decision as to what type of vehicle should be acquired). The study
also compared the Australian position on input tax deductions to South Africa to determine what
international norms are insofar it relates to an input tax deduction on motor cars. It was found that
the current VAT legislation does not achieve tax equity and that a suitable legislative intervention
may be required to address the inequity.Master
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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