Words Monique Verduyn – Photos André van der Merwe Ambitious young graduates often have target lists of companies they’d like to work for and almost all of them have lists of companies they would never work for, no matter what. Four years ago, one of the organisations to steer clear of was the National Youth…
In day-to-day operations, most businesses interact directly and indirectly with clients and service providers. Many transactions that take place during this interaction are legitimate transactions, whereas some of these transactions might raise a few questions as to the validity of the source of the money, or even just that the transaction does not make business…
It has now become apparent, beyond any doubt, that a company planning to become or remain B-BBEE compliant must have some level of black ownership. This is not because black ownership is somehow ‘compulsory’, but simply because of how the point-scoring system works. From multiple calculated scenarios we have done, more than 95% of companies…
Globally, and increasingly locally, there is growing noise about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which has led many technology futurists to predict a utopia for humankind while others predicted, paradoxically, that millions of jobs would soon be obsolete and taken over by robots, not to mention the coming apocalypse. However, I believe these views…
Millennials. They’ve come of age in a digital era. Exposed to the world’s woes − climate change, human rights abuses, recessions and more – their social and political consciousness says, ‘we expect more’. And, they’re pulling the rug from under us all. Millennials – people born in the 1980s or 1990s − have a whistle…
The robots are heading straight towards us and we are inviting them in to our homes, workplaces and vehicles. Not surprisingly, because they make our lives more convenient, our work more efficient, our buildings more sustainable and our roads safer. But at the same time we need to think about how we maximise the upside…
The retirement landscape in South Africa is characterised by two pension systems: an advanced formal pensions sector and a means-tested social security system. However, a concern raised by actuary Rob Rusconi is that of the large ‘uncovered gap’ between these two systems: those individuals who benefit from neither The biggest systemic issue, given South Africa’s…
5 Lessons from history on AI, automation and employment The urgency of shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution Cloud technology and SME success Operating your business in the cloud 5 Lessons from history on AI, automation and employment History tells us that in the long run, technology is a net creator of jobs. Is this time…
In this, the first of a series of two articles, we look at the pressures on an accounting firm’s profitability There was a time when accountancy business owners were seemingly guaranteed high profit emanating from a business model that was often characterised as the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 model. That model is also known as the…
Tax morality and the CA(SA) The IT14SD process can be a huge headache for the unsuspecting taxpayer Tackling the tax morality challenge Tax morality and the CA(SA) Everyone who has studied tax should be familiar with the famous ruling in the Duke of Westminster Case,1 which is often cited in defence of (usually) aggressive tax…