The treatment of financial services under the VAT has been one of the most contentious VAT issues since the origin of the VAT. Due to theoretical and measurement complexities, most countries opt to exempt financial services under the VAT. Exemption is the cause of all the controversy. Exempting supplies under the VAT compromises one of the corner-stones of the VAT – neutrality. South Africa is one of many countries that exempts most financial services under VAT. Credit card suppliers in South Africa offer a bundle of financial services comprising fee-based-charges and interest earned. The credit card user is usually only charged for the interest. Interest is an exempt supply under VAT. This gives rise to many distortions for South African credit card users and financial intermediaries. Exhaustive research has been conducted on the treatment of financial services under the VAT around the world. This study only focusses on the VAT treatment of interest margins of credit cards in South Africa. Firstly, it was determined that credit card offerings in South Africa include bundled offerings which is impractical to separate on a transaction-for-for transaction-basis due to valuation complexities and market conditions. Secondly, it was determined that VAT doesn’t play a major role in credit card suppliers’ decision on how offerings are structured. It is mostly guided by the competition and legislation. Thirdly, it was determined that administrative burden and compliance cost caused by apportionment in South Africa is highly underplayed in the literature. Lastly, it was proposed that full taxation of all financial services with implicit charges at a lower rate or full taxation of fee-based charges with exemption of financial services with a partial input recovery, to be the best alternatives for South Africa to consider to tax financial services under VAT. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / am2014 / Taxation / unrestricted

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The Daily Assessment Form (OAF) retrospectively assessed symptoms of late luteal phase dysphoric disorder (LLPDD), both at the beginning and at the end of a 2-month time interval. Ninety-four women between the ages of 18 and 45 entered the study. Half of the subjects viewed a negative-case, stereotypic presentation of LLPDD prior to the pretest. sixty-eight subjects qualified on the pretest to complete the study. Half of the remaining no-case subjects and half of the remaining negative-case subjects completed 8 weeks' prospective ratings via the OAF. Forty-eight subjects remained to complete the posttest at the end of that time interval. Pretest Total and Pretest Criteria scores revealed significant main effects for case-presentation condition (E[l,63] = 7.08, R = .01) and (E[l,63] = 8.34, R = .01) and completion level (E[l,63] = 6.76, R = .01) and (E[l,63] = 3.76, R .06). Effect sizes equalled 0.48 and 0.45 for case presentation and 1.92 and 1.98 for completion.

There is evidence from the literature that the negative emotions and behaviours that bystanders expressed in reactions to witnessing bullying could have stemmed from self-debasing cognitive distortions and errors in thinking patterns which included personalisation, catastrophising, over-generalisation and selective abstraction. For this reason, the purpose of this qualitative descriptive-exploratory study was to explore and describe 10 early adolescent bystanders' experiences of school bullying following a self-debasing cognitive distortion restructuring intervention. Appraisal and cognitive theory were adopted as the overarching theoretical framework. This is because both theories demonstrated how individual thinking patterns could play a primary and significant role in the development and maintenance of emotional and behavioural responses to events witnessed or experienced. A descriptive-exploratory research design was used because it best suited the purpose of the study. The philosophical assumption underpinning this study emanated from an interpretivism paradigm which is a paradigm concerned with understanding the world from the perspective of people‟s experiences thereof. Purposive sampling was used to select 10 participants who were within the age range of 11 to 13 years for the study. Individual interviews were used as formal data collection strategies while a reflective research journal and audio recordings were used as additional data collection methods. The inductive thematic data analysis process was followed to analyse all data collected. The data was collected and analysed in two stages. The findings of this study, from the pre-intervention phase, indicated that personalisation evoked self-blame and feelings of guilt; catastrophising amplified anxiety and fear; overgeneralisation induced and exacerbated a negative perception of school safety and selective abstraction led to indirect co-victimisation. The findings that emerged at the first stage informed the common concepts that were addressed in the intervention. The findings of this study from the post-intervention phase revealed specifically that the self-debasing cognitive distortion restructuring intervention modified bystanders‟ experiences of school bullying. There were observable reduction in bystanders‟ negative emotional and behavioural reactions to witnessing bullying as a result of learning to challenge the validity and reality of distortions in their thinking patterns. Therefore, it is recommended that school counsellors and educational psychologists should provide adequate support to victims of bullying by equipping them with cognitive restructuring skills to root out the source of bias in their thought patterns. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Educational Psychology / PhD / Unrestricted

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Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / This study focused on the cognitive distortions of child sex offenders in a South African sample. Child sex offenders are a heterogeneous group but share some similarities. Firstly, the majority of child sex offenders are male. Secondly their sexual attraction to children seems to be influenced to some degree by their thoughts around child sex offending, and the world in general. / South Africa

Le modèle ΛCDM de la cosmologie repose sur l’existence d’une composante exotique, appelée énergie noire, pour expliquer l’accélération tardive de l’expansion de l’univers à z < 0.7. Des alternatives à cette constante cosmologique proposent de modifier la théorie de la gravitation basée sur la relativité générale aux échelles cosmologiques. Depuis l’automne 2014, le multi-spectrographe SDSS-eBOSS effectue un relevé de quasars dans un domaine en redshift peu exploré entre 0.8 ≤ z ≤ 2.2 dont l’un des objectifs majeurs est d’étendre les contraintes sur la nature de l’énergie noire et de tester la validité de la théorie de la relativité générale à plus haut redshift en utilisant les quasars comme traceurs de la matière.Dans cette thèse, nous mesurons et analysons la fonction de corrélation à deux points de l’échantillon de quasars obtenu après deux ans d'observation de eBOSS pour contraindre les distances cosmiques, à savoir la distance angulaire DA et le taux d'expansion H, ainsi que le taux de croissance des structures fσ8 à un redshift effectif Zeff = 1.52. Nous commençons par construire des catalogues des grandes structures qui prennent en compte la géométrie angulaire et radiale du relevé. Puis pour obtenir des contraintes robustes, nous identifions plusieurs sources d’effets systématiques, en particulier ceux liés à la modélisation et aux observations sont étudiées avec des « mock catalogues » dédiés qui correspondent à des réalisations fictives de l’échantillon de quasars eBOSS. Les paramètres cosmologiques de ces catalogues fictifs étant connus, ils sont utilisés comme référence pour tester notre procédure d’analyse. Les résultats de ce travail sur l’évolution des distances cosmiques sont compatibles avec les prédictions du modèle ΛCDM utilisant les paramètres de Planck et basé sur l’existence d’une constante cosmologique. La mesure du taux de croissance des structures est compatible avec la prédiction de ce modèle basé sur la relativité générale, ce qui étend ainsi la validité de la théorie aux échelles cosmologiques à grand redshift. Nous utilisons également notre mesure pour mettre à jour les contraintes sur les modèles d'extensions à ΛCDM et sur les scénarios de gravité modifiée. Ce travail de thèse constitue une première étude menée avec les données de quasars eBOSS et sera utilisée pour l’analyse de l’échantillon final à la fin 2019 ou l’on attend une amélioration de la précision statistique d’un facteur 2. Associé à BOSS, eBOSS ouvrira la voie pour les futurs programmes d’observation, comme le télescope au sol DESI et le satellite Euclid. Ces deux programmes sonderont intensivement l’époque de l’univers entre 1 < z < 2 en observant plusieurs millions de spectres, ce qui permettra d'améliorer d'un ordre de grandeur au moins les contraintes actuelles sur les paramètres cosmologiques. / The ΛCDM model of cosmology assumes the existence of an exotic component, called dark energy, to explain the late-time acceleration of the expansion of the universe at redshift z < 0.7. Alternative scenarios to this cosmological constant suggest to modify the theory of gravitation based on general relativity at cosmological scales. Since fall 2014, the SDSS-IV eBOSS multi-object spectrograph has undertaken a survey of quasars in the almost unexplored redshift range 0.8 ≤ z ≤ 2.2 with the key science goal to complement the constraints on dark energy and extend the test of general relativity at higher redshifts by using quasars as direct tracers of the matter field.In this thesis work, we measure and analyse the two-point correlation function of the two-year data taking of eBOSS quasar sample to constrain the cosmic distances, i.e. the angular diameter distance DA and the expansion rate H, and the growth rate of structure fσ8 at an effective redshift Zeff = 1.52. First, we build large-scale structure catalogues that account for the angular and radial incompleteness of the survey. Then to obtain robust results, we investigate several potential systematics, in particular modeling and observational systematics are studied using dedicated mock catalogs which are fictional realizations of the data sample. These mocks are created with known cosmological parameters such that they are used as a benchmark to test the analysis pipeline. The results on the evolution of distances are consistent with the predictions for ΛCDM with Planck parameters assuming a cosmological constant. The measurement of the growth of structure is consistent with general relativity and hence extends its validity to higher redshift. We also provide updated constraints on extensions of ΛCDM and models of modified gravity. This study is a first use of eBOSS quasars as tracers of the matter field and will be included in the analysis of the final eBOSS sample at the end of 2019 with an expected improvement on the statistical precision of a factor 2. Together with BOSS, eBOSS will pave the way for future programs such as the ground-based Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the space-based mission Euclid. Both programs will extensively probe the intermediate redshift range 1 < z < 2 with millions of spectra, improving the cosmological constraints by an order of magnitude with respect to current measurements.

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