This paper analyzes the tax effects of the German real estate transfer tax (RETT). While the vast majority of single-family houses in Germany are owner-occupied, apartments are usually held by private and incorporated investors. For this reason, we conducted a regression analysis to determine the effects of increasing RETT on the number and the prices of transactions separately for these two market segments. Our findings suggest that increasing the RETT by 1% is associated with a decline in transactions by 0.23% for single-family houses, but with no significant effect on the prices of traded houses. Conversely, for apartments, we find no significantly negative effects on the transactions, but the price effect of the RETT tends to be negative. Finally, for vacant lots, we find even larger quantity effects than for singlefamily houses suggesting roughly an elasticity of -1. The results for this specific market segment indicate that the government operates near the top of a Laffer curve. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

Duties of so-called quoted joint stock companies Thesis author: Mgr. Marek Novotný Thesis supervisor: prof. JUDr. Stanislava Černá, CSc. This thesis is concerned with the regulation of duties of quoted joint stock companies (especially the duty of information) and its various institutes. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the legislation in this area of law and its development, with emphasis on the transposition of European legislation, and subject them to critical evaluation. In the first chapter the theoretical framework is defined by describing key legal concepts (the term "quoted joint stock company", "regulated markets") and the development of the most important legal regulation in this area - Act No. 256/2004 Coll., on Business Activities on the Capital Market. The second chapter is devoted to regulated markets and subject information duty. The third chapter deals with the admission of a security to trading on a regulated market and associated initial information duty of joint stock company, which is willing to become quoted. I describe mainly the prospectus and its essential elements. In the fourth chapter I analyze in detail the different types of regular (periodic) information duties, which are the annual report, semi-annual report and interim report. The following fifth chapter is...

Information duty in pre-contractual negotiations Act no. 89/2012 Sb., the Civil Code, has brought many changes into the private law. The new Civil Code within the frame of pre-contractual liability among other things explicitly embedded in the provision of Section 1728 Subsection 2 the so called general information duty, i. e. a duty of the contracting parties to notify each other of certain circumstances prior to the conclusion of the contract. The paper aspires to define the term and the scope of general information duty with the help of the comparison of approaches toward this duty in other states and with the help of existing judicial (both Czech and foreign) decision making. In certain aspects, documents of European Contract Law were also taken into account owing to the fact that the European Contract Law was used in the process of drafting the valid and effective Civil Code. Even though many sources were used while writing the paper, the scope of general information duty could not be definitely determined. With respect to the fact that no explicit and distinct limits of this duty are set, the main source of knowledge will be judicial decision making which should take a consistent attitude toward a complex issue of general information duty which is inseparably related to the Economic Analysis of Law....

Quoique l'obligation de renégocier constitue un outil ordinaire du paysage juridique, son appréhension par le droit positif n'est guère satisfaisante. Réduisant l'obligation de renégocier à un simple devoir d'entrer en pourparlers, la jurisprudence altère considérablement l'efficacité des clauses de hardship. Politiquement dangereuse, une telle solution apparaît aussi techniquement inexacte au regard de la notion d'obligation de renégocier. L'obligation de renégocier ayant pour finalité d'aménager ou d'alléger la dette de l'un des contractants, il apparaît nécessaire d'imposer à celui qui doit renégocier qu'il fasse des sacrifices sans lesquels l'obligation de renégocier ne peut produire son effet utile. Cette dernière ne va pas, pour autant, jusqu'à constituer une obligation de réviser: non seulement car l'échec de la renégociation n'est jamais fautif en soi, mais aussi parce que l'exercice de la liberté de ne pas réviser reste licite lorsqu'il se justifie par la préservation d'un intérêt raisonnable. Le sens de cette étude est ainsi de rétablir la véritable portée de l'obligation de renégocier, en exposant à la fois les exigences et les limites inhérentes à cette notion. / Accordingly, the duty to renegotiate could appear at first sight as a well-known and familiar device of contract drafting. Yet, the current state of the law is nonetheless quite unsatisfactory. Case law tends indeed to limit drastically the efficiency of hardship clauses by adopting an overly restrictive conception of the duty to renegotiate. This solution is not only unsatisfactory in practice, but also technically inaccurate regarding the concept of a duty to renegotiate. The purpose of this duty is indeed to reduce the debt of one of the parties. Therefore, the duty to renegotiate imposes to make some sacrifices without which the efficiency of the duty is drastically restricted. But it does not mean that the duty to renegotiate imposes to modify the contract. Not only because the failure of the renegotiation is not perse a case of breach of contract, but also because the parties can legitimately refuse to modify the contract in order to protect their reasonable interests. The purpose of this study is therefore to restore its true scope to the duty, by unveiling both the requirements and the limits that are inherent to the concept of a duty to renegotiate.

M.Cur. / The cardiothoracic intensive care unit is a dynamic environment which is characterised by a high patient turnover, staff shortages, medication, doctor's and nursing protocols and specialised nursing skills are required of the registered nurse. The registered nurse working in this environment is an independent practitioner and is accountable for her acts and omissions. The registered nurse can only accept accountability if she/he has the ability (knowledge, skills and values), the responsibility and authority to carry out the actions (Bergman, 1982:8). The learner enters the cardiothoracic intensive care unit as part of the clinical teaching she receives at a specific university. Due to staff shortages, the learner is often given the responsibility and authority to carry out actions for which she is accountable, without having the ability (knowledge, skills and values) to act. She may, therefore, not be able to nurse the patient safely and effectively. The unit manager is responsible for creating a learning climate in the unit and utilises an orientation programme to create this climate. An orientation programme introduces new staff members to the philosophy, goals and procedures necessary to work in a particular setting (Brookfield, 1986:64). The adult learner wants to learn that which is task- and problem-orientated in a selfdirective, independent way ida climate that is conducive to learning. The question arises: What must the content of an orientation programme for a certain cardiothoracic intensive care unit of a specific private hospital be and how must it be managed to facilitate safe and effective nursing by learners working in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit? The objective of the study is to explore and describe the content and management of an orientation programme for a specific cardiothoracic intensive care unit in a specific private hospital. A qualitative, exploratory and descriptive contextual study was conducted to explore and describe the content and management of the orientation programme. A contextual framework is described and focus group interviews were conducted with learners and registered nurses. From the results of the conceptual framework and focus group interviews, the content and manageent of the orientation programme was described. Due to the function perspective of the study, an orientatio nprogramme was developed from the results of the study.

The previous audit report gained a lot of criticism since it contained to much standard text that failed to convey valuable information for users. This lead to IAASB implementing a new standard, called ISA 701-KAM, which was implemented by all listed companies in the end of 2016. The purpose of KAM is to make the audit report less standardized and instead provide transparent and entity-specific information. However, there are those who believe that the confidentiality duty, which is prerequisite to be able to perform an audit, can stand in contrast to the new standard.  In order to investigate this issue, we have interviewed auditors to get their view of how they have implemented and applied KAM in the audit report. Our results show that auditors are skeptical in regards to the audit report being as entity-specific and transparent as IAASB expect it to be, since there exist an underlying fear of overstepping TCD.

Magister Legum - LLM / The utilisation of trusts has become a popular trend among taxpayers, especially high net worth individuals1 (hereafter HNWI) who wish to reduce potential estate duties. The SARS Strategic Plan stated that there is a ‘compliance risk posed by HNWI and the use of trusts to conceal their income’.2 The SARS Strategic Plan announced that trust reform would be prioritised. Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan (hereafter Gordhan) referred in his 2012/2013 budget speech3 to various measures proposed to protect the tax base and limit the scope for tax leakage and avoidance. Gordhan reiterated the state’s position regarding the abuse of trusts by indicating that reforms will be made regarding the taxation of both local and offshore trusts which have long been a problem for global tax enforcement due to their flexibility and flow-through nature. National Treasury and SARS are concerned about trusts, largely because of the income-splitting opportunities that trusts afford taxpayers. There are envisaged tax amendments which will impact South Africa’s (hereafter SA) trust landscape and could derail many carefully drafted trust structures. It will thus be important for estate owners to consider these envisaged tax amendments when they come into operation, in order to ascertain the full extent of the implications and then it can also further be determined what the impact of these 1 Income in excess of R7 million, alternatively R75 million in assets. South Afican Revenue Service (hereafter SARS) Strategic Plan (2012/13- 2016/17) 19 available at http://www.sars.gov.za (accessed 6 November 2013) (hereafter SARS Strategic Plan). 2 SARS Strategic Plan 19. 3 2012-2013 budget speech 22 available at http://www.sars.gov.za (accessed 6 November 2013) (hereafter budget speech). 11 changes will be on the effectiveness of the discretionary family trust as an estate planning vehicle in SA in the future. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the impact of the current statutory anti-tax avoidance provisions on the effectiveness of the discretionary family trust as an estate planning vehicle in SA, especially due to the fact that the trust form has been abused in the past for tax avoidance purposes.

No abstract available / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

Consumer protection is one of the recent trends in the private law and goes nowadays through very dynamic development. Its driving force is especially the European law through directives of the European Parliament and the Council. The necessity of their transposition greatly influences our national law. The last change was an adoption of the Law no. 89/2012 Sb., the Civil Code. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the information duties of entrepreneurs which have been adopted to protect consumers. The thesis evaluates whether the given regulation does not burden disproportionately entrepreneurs on the one hand and provides an adequate protection for the consumers on the other hand. The thesis also deals with the consequences that may arise in particular cases for failure to comply with the information duties.

The aim of the thesis was to analyse dependency between setting of the price level and gasoline quantum sold at a chosen distributor in the Czech Republic and in Poland. In the first part of the thesis, there are characterized price theory, tax theory, theory of state interventions, supply, demand and price elasticity of demand. In the second part, first, there is analysed whole market with fuels in both countries with their comparison. These markets have had slightly different development and they do have different market structure, because of the existence of the market leader in Poland. Second, there are analysed the data of the chosen distributor and analysed dependencies between price and quantum sold. Research showed that there is an existence of dependencies of quantum sold on both change of the absolute price and change of the relative price. These dependencies and the impact of the relative price change is more significant in the Czech Republic than in Poland.