There hasn’t been a crisis or uncertainty in human history that has failed to suck in swathes of snake oil salesmen. What I hadn’t considered was that in the case of value added tax, the GCC would also attract the wacky sandwich-board men so beloved by tourists at Speakers Corner in London.
Sounding off from atop soap boxes to anyone who will listen to them are the deniers. "It will never happen. Remember income tax in Saudi Arabia in 1988? Sixteen days before it launched they cancelled it and no one has seen sight nor sound of it since."
They have a point. That said, many good points lead to the wrong conclusion. VAT is happening and will begin on the January 1, 2018.
Better organised and properly funded are those looking for believers, particularly those panicking because they’ve left it late to get started on their VAT compliance project. Offering universal cures, these hucksters bang their drums to attract and congregate worriers.
Have you received an invitation to attend a VAT training course? There are quite a few on offer in the UAE and they are not cheap. A couple of days will set you back up to US$2,000. Out of curiosity why are these quoted in dollars when we have dirhams?
Do I have a personal angle? As an accountant, I hate to see money potentially wasted. I’m not here to diss training, its important, but there is a queer attitude to it in the UAE. A reluctance to invest in human capital that is likely to stem from having a transient population. Another one of those good points that is ultimately counter intuitive.
You wouldn’t delay buying a new delivery truck just because it might break down. In any case, you can always safeguard training expense via time-tapered chargebacks if the trainee resigns.
Courses offer a good, but expensive, general introduction to VAT. As an area of study VAT is fiendishly complex. As light refracts producing rainbows, so do many VAT rules when interrogated. Unlike rainbows, the leprechauns at the end of these are collecting gold in the form of fines, not handing over pots of it.
Today it’s too late. You’ve already booked the course and made an upfront payment. Don’t worry about how lost your delegate might get among the other attendees, you have bigger issues.
Swishing around inside, being diluted among the others, is your industry sector with its specific VAT rules. Some sectors are more interesting or have amusing stories. Presenters often use these as a method of keeping audiences awake.
You may have conceived the idea of creating an organisational VAT champion but there is a possibility of unwittingly weaponising this employee’s knowledge. After all there is a critical shortage of skilled personnel in the GCC.
This champion could take advantage of their newly acquired skill premium and up sticks to a better package elsewhere. While this can leave an immediate bad taste in the corporate mouth, what can truly linger is the following. By applying Guru status to one individual, this risks the construction of an unassailable position within the organisation, its ramparts reinforced with VAT arcana.
You might think that it would only be a matter of time before unmasking. There are two reasons why this doesn’t happen, beginning with the leveraging of their relationship with the entity’s external auditors.
Auditors function affirm the material accuracy of an organisation’s financial results while validating their systems and controls more generally. The depth of this is dependent on the contracted engagement. Within the fee structure, your VAT champion might negotiate continuing first or further line support for VAT issues, thus acting as a last port of call when the individual’s knowledge, wider peer circle or Google search fails to satisfy a query.
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Kathryn Hawkes of House of Hawkes on being a good guest (because we’ve all had bad ones)
- Arrive with a thank you gift, or make sure you have one for your host by the time you leave.
- Offer to buy groceries, cook them a meal or take your hosts out for dinner.
- Help out around the house.
- Entertain yourself so that your hosts don’t feel that they constantly need to.
- Leave no trace of your stay – if you’ve borrowed a book, return it to where you found it.
- Offer to strip the bed before you go.
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
A little about CVRL
Founded in 1985 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory (CVRL) is a government diagnostic centre that provides testing and research facilities to the UAE and neighbouring countries.
One of its main goals is to provide permanent treatment solutions for veterinary related diseases.
The taxidermy centre was established 12 years ago and is headed by Dr Ulrich Wernery.
Feeding the thousands for iftar
Six industrial scale vats of 500litres each are used to cook the kanji or broth
Each vat contains kanji or porridge to feed 1,000 people
The rice porridge is poured into a 500ml plastic box
350 plastic tubs are placed in one container trolley
Each aluminium container trolley weighing 300kg is unloaded by a small crane fitted on a truck
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Revibe%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Hamza%20Iraqui%20and%20Abdessamad%20Ben%20Zakour%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Refurbished%20electronics%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410m%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFlat6Labs%2C%20Resonance%20and%20various%20others%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Tuesday's fixtures
Kyrgyzstan v Qatar, 5.45pm
Boulder shooting victims
• Denny Strong, 20
• Neven Stanisic, 23
• Rikki Olds, 25
• Tralona Bartkowiak, 49
• Suzanne Fountain, 59
• Teri Leiker, 51
• Eric Talley, 51
• Kevin Mahoney, 61
• Lynn Murray, 62
• Jody Waters, 65
Get Out
Director: Jordan Peele
Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford
Four stars
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
A State of Passion
Directors: Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Stars: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Rating: 4/5
2024%20Dubai%20Marathon%20Results
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Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
