That Bruce Lyle and his built-from-scratch fertiliser business, Nutri-Flo, has survived its nine-year fight against Sasol with the competition authorities so far is remarkable.
The tax reforms announced in the latest budget are like the prophet taking a few resigned steps towards the mountain. The South African Revenue Service was never going to win the paperwork battle with South Africa’s substantial informal sector without completely destroying it.
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/ 13 February 2008
BEE verification agencies seem to be gaining the upper hand in the long-raging and confusing debate over whether to allow self-assessment by businesses of their own BEE scores. According to a trade and industry department guideline, issued in October, self-assessed scorecards will not be recognised.
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/ 28 January 2008
If you can buy insurance against something as inevitable as your own death, why not against that other great certainty, taxes? A small company, Qdos Consulting, recently received a licence to sell what it calls "revenue enquiry insurance" in South Africa. For as little as R220 a year, individual taxpayers can cover themselves against a tax audit of their books by the South African Revenue Service.
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/ 7 December 2007
An aggrieved husband once referred his dispute with his wife to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), asking it to grant a divorce. The story, part of CCMA lore, says something about the reach of the employment tribunal into the national psyche. The latest Tokiso Dispute Settlement review reveals interesting aspects of that psyche, writes Barrie Terblanche.
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/ 5 December 2007
A profound sense of disempowerment among emerging farmers has come to light following FNB’s announcement of a R300million deal with United States development agency USAid. The deal will see the agency guaranteeing half the loans the bank extends to black farmers, writes Barrie Terblanche.
The CBD of Athlone, Cape Town, has become the first previously disadvantaged area in South Africa to be declared a City Improvement District (CID), a concept that has worked wonders in turning around parts of the CBDs of Cape Town and Johannesburg. But can it work in smaller areas, driven by local owner-managers, as opposed to large corporations?
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/ 17 September 2007
When Ahmed Mursal was held up by a drug-desperate gunman in the tuckshop where he was working in the Cape Flats township of Delft, he offered to buy the gun for R250. He told the gunman he could pay only R30 then, but would speak to his Somali brothers, one of whom was sure to want to buy the gun. If the gunman brought the gun the next day, Mursal would pay the balance of R220. The gunman accepted.
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/ 17 September 2007
The only thing certain about the Competition Tribunal’s precedent-setting ruling against South Africa’s steel monolith, Arcelor Mittal SA, is that it’s going to have far-reaching consequences. But whether it is for Mittal or the tribunal itself, remains to be seen.
Small businesses find themselves in a catch-22 when it comes to BEE verification. Officially, they are exempt from the heavy red tape and costs involved in scoring a business’s BEE compliance. But, increasingly, they find that they have to submit to red tape and costs just to prove that they are indeed exempt.