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The Latest News on Brexit, Expat Tax and Green Card

Posted in Brexit, Global mobility, HR, Immigration, News, Tax consultancy, Taxation

South Africa

South Africans to feel bite of new expat tax

South Africans will receive a break only for the first million rubles earned abroad

Several thousand South Africans will be affected by new amendments to the Income Tax Act, which will come into force on March 1, 2020.

Presently, South African tax residents who provide services outside the country on behalf of an employer for more than 183 full days for any 12-month period may be exempt from income tax.

However, in accordance with the new rules, which will be introduced in March, these South Africans will receive a break only for the first million rubles earned abroad. You can then be taxed in accordance with South Africa’s own income tax system.

Although 1 million rubles may seem like a high threshold, it’s not so much when you consider conversion in dollars (67,936 dollars) or in pounds (51,857 pounds), Tim Mertens, chairman of Sovereign Trust, said.

Also he said that this amount would include taxable additional benefits, such as housing, pensions and travel expenses.

It is clear that some expats are offended by this change.

Concerns have been expressed that restricting this exemption could increase permanent emigration from South Africa and adversely affect remittances to the country, especially for those who have lower incomes and work abroad.

Read more on businesstech.co.za


Luxembourg

Luxembourg welcomes 60 finance firms because of Brexit

A further Brexit outcome has been that Luxembourg law is increasingly being chosen by international institutions active in financial markets

Last week, an industry group announced that more than 60 financial companies have moved some operations to Luxembourg to protect themselves from the consequences of Brexit.

While EU lawmakers voted in Brussels to confirm Britain’s withdrawal from the bloc, public-private agency Luxembourg for Finance released its figures.

According to the group, 60 firms “publicly announced the transfer of their business to Luxembourg because of Brexit,” and at least ten more will do so.

“Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, Luxembourg has seen a spike in interest from firms planning for their future EU and cross-border activities,” it said.

“A further Brexit outcome has been that Luxembourg law is increasingly being chosen by international institutions active in financial markets.”

Luxembourg, a Grand Duchy in the heart of Europe, landlocked, has a reputation for financial services and careful bankers.

According to KPMG accountants, Luxembourg welcomed 65 firms thanks to Brexit, ahead of Ireland by 64 and the Netherlands and France by 30 each.

These companies include banks and their departments, insurers and stockbrokers, who move their operations from the city to continental areas.

Read more on today.rtl.lu


USA

The Supreme Court votes to allow a green-card wealth test in USA

The Supreme Court was often a friendly forum for the Donald Trump administration when his immigration policy failed in lower courts.

In 2018, judges blessed the third iteration of Trump’s travel ban from predominantly Muslim countries.

The following year, they allowed the president to move forward with asylum restrictions and redirect federal money to a wall on the border with Mexico.

On January 27, the Supreme Court voted to allow a new wealth test for candidates for a green card, while the trial is ongoing.

The latter decision, like two of the other three, divided judges 5-4. For 130 years, the government could deny immigrants permanent legal status at the risk of becoming a “public prosecution.” But the rule, which initially prohibited only a handful of disadvantaged immigrants, could, according to the revision announced in August last year, disable hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

Read more on www.economist.com


World

2020: A millennium transformation for HR

In the context of HR priorities, 2020 is seen as a landmark year in which special attention is paid to new technologies, such as hypeautomatization, blockchain, AI security, distributed cloud, autonomous functions and their additional role in the domain.

An expanding scope for technology in organizational effectiveness

While it is generally accepted that automation is a must for businesses, it is also critical to achieve increased efficiency, increased productivity, quality, and significant cost savings. Consequently, innovative IT service partners provide customers with support in areas such as process automation, ML, conversation robots, and IoT. Futuristic automation platforms are being introduced that can integrate, coordinate, automate with various mechanisms of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and create chat bots for other enterprises.

Humans and Machines have started to work alongside

We have witnessed how the evolving digital workforce takes on routine, non-cognitive tasks, thereby freeing employees from focusing on tasks that require a higher level of human cognition and interaction with people. Thanks to such complementary activities, human capital now has a wide bandwidth for better interaction with customers, strategic thinking and increasing the ability to solve problems to promote business interests.

Evolving applications of technology in HR

The application of technology has manifested itself in several human resource workflows, such as recruitment, data validation, productivity, training and development, collaboration, recovery, and performance management. It is very interesting that we saw how AI was used in the process of checking the data of future employees. Verifications related to educational qualifications and previous studies require careful study and, being a manual process, are tedious in nature. Thanks to the design, development and deployment of bots, organizations can now work in concert with different applications and unify associated data.

Read more on www.peoplematters.in


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