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Pdfcasting: Baker Tilly Klitou Romanian Tax Monthly August 2011

September 8, 2011 Leave a comment

Neacşu's Letter, written in 1512, is the oldes...

The oldest document in the Romanian language - it stays the same but the tax laws change every few months!

Baker Tilly Klitou sent us their latest Romanian tax alert.

Dear Quoracy.com subscribers,

Please find enclosed Baker Tilly Klitou Tax Alert for the period of August 2011 in English and Romanian language.

The purpose of this Tax Monthly is to inform you about the latest tax legislation changes that could have a major impact on your company’s activity.

In case you need additional information or comments are necessary please do not hesitate to contact us.

If you do not wish to receive further news updates, please let us know or unsubscribe by clicking the link below, at the end of this e-mail.

Kind regards,

Nadia Oanea

Tax Manager

Bucharest Office
52, Splaiul Independentei,
Bucharest, Romania
Tel: +40-21-3156100

Fax: +40-21-3156102
E-mail: mailto:nadia.oanea

Tax Monthly_August_ 2011_EN.pdf
Tax Monthly_August_ 2011_RO.pdf

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UK Trade and Investment Initiatives to support business ventures to and from Poland

July 18, 2011 2 comments

logo of UKTI

A message from UKTI

Martin Oxley sent this out for the Foreign and Commonwealth office and we are pleased to assist in its propagation.

Dear Quoracy.com subscribers,

Poland presents an attractive nearshore growth opportunity for Britain Plc. In line with the new UKTI strategy presented to government recently by Lord Green, Minister of State for Trade and Investment we are introducing a step change in the way UKTI supports British business growth.

We are taking a very proactive approach on behalf of government to provide a range of bespoke services to enable British SME’s to significantly enhance exports and also work with large corporations to win major overseas contracts and expedite their growth in market.

With our new Ambassador HMA Robin Barnett and the Embassy team we are engaging to support strong growth oriented business agenda in Poland.

With this in mind I am pleased to attach a brief outline of the services which UKTI has developed to support British business in Poland. I very much look forward to meeting you over the course of the coming weeks to discuss with you how we can assist you with your specific company needs.

I am very happy to visit you or alternatively you would be most welcome to visit us and I will provide you a tour of our excellent event facilities at the Embassy.

Kind regards

Martin Oxley

110715 EVR Expand your Business with UKTI Poland.pdf

Quoracy.com would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our dear friend Martin Oxley on his recent new appointment to the FCO in Warsaw, and to wish him every success working with Her Majesty’s new Ambassador to Poland, His Excellency Robin Barnett. We wish you and your team many successes and a lot of fun.

Is your business in the “ivy league”?

July 15, 2011 Leave a comment

variegated ivy leaves

'Hedera' of reference?

I was recently reminded of something my old gardener told me about ivy. I had been surprised at how slow some lovely variegated ivy that had been planted by my fence was coming on, and his words were as follows:

With ivy, the first year it is put in, it does nothing, it just sulks at having been put in a new place. The second year is starts to spread out horizontally along the ground by the bottom of the fence, and in the third year it starts to grow upward, like a curtain.

Wise words, from someone who knew his onions. And his ivy. It seems to me that this is a great analogy for many new businesses. Entrepreneurs obviously look for a rapid return on capital employed. They want their profits and the cash back to invest in the next thing. But nature takes its course with some businesses just like it does with the ivy, and you cannot rush it.

The first year, you have set up costs, people are getting used to each other in a new team with a new product, new identity. This is like the ivy “sulking” – just establishing a new root system and adapting to the chemistry of the soil and the direction of the light.

The second year you start to see sales pick up but the prices are not that good yet and also the volumes don’t allow the contribution to cover fixed costs. You get growth but you don’t get the profit. It is like the ivy growing along the ground by the bottom of the fence. It is obviously going somewhere, but you aren’t getting the effect of it yet.

The third year you reach a certain critical mass, you break even you start to nudge into profit, your cash flows turn the corner and you start paying back your seed finance. This is like the ivy making its curtain up the fence.

If the ivy survives at all, it will certainly produce the coverage in time. The same with these new businesses. They simply need to be nurtured and for nature to be allowed to take its course. If the soil is right, the light is there, and the water, the plant healthy, then it will do what it is programmed to do in its own time. Micro-managing it will not help. Restructuring the team which is only starting to gel will not help. it will be like transplanting the ivy at the end of the second year for failing to raise – it will only go through its sulking and creeping years all over again in the new position.

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New FISK website up and running

July 14, 2011 Leave a comment

The Financial Institute of Corporate Treasurers in Poland

The Financial Institute of Corporate Treasurers in Poland or Finansowy Instytut Skarbnikow Korporacyjnych, a public interest organisation promoting education and best practice in the use by businesses of banking products and financial instruments, has now relaunched its website here – and some of the content on this website will be shared over there and vice versa. Subcribers to FISK can access the password protected content on this website, for example, such as the recent article on the use of factoring to achieve the unlocking of otherwise disallowable tax cash flow benefits.

The new FISK website is crammed with information about best Treasury Management practice and on it also you can register for the seminars and courses, a new virtual treasury college leading to FISK’s certification as a Corporate Treasurer, on the way learning techniques which will both save and earn money for your organisation.

Protected: Fiscal considerations on the factoring of trade debts in Poland

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OECD Corporate Governance Guidelines criticised for failing to empower auditors

June 28, 2011 Leave a comment

The logo of the Organisation for Economic Co-o...

Fast forward or reverse?

I wrote my views today to the head of Corporate Governance at the OECD relating to their Guidelines on Corporate Governance. A work which I believe under-represents to position of external audit in Governance.

The document can be downloaded as a pdf for free from the OECD website.

It has been used as the basis of the Corporate Governance code in numerous countries. Its paucity of regulations on what should be the rights and powers as well as duties of external auditors have assisted Governments to fail to accord a full range of powers – of the sort enjoyed in the UK for instance – to external statutory auditors in many countries.

At the same time the EU did not impose on Member States the obligation to enact that auditors should be entitled to attend AGMs - at the very least of quoted companies they audit and given the right to speak at them. That is because they saw it as a matter of Corporate Governance which should be covered by Corporate Governance Codes.

At the same time, even were the OECD code contains great recommendations such as the one on page 44 that barriers to international voting should be done away with, many nations are still asking for physical attendance at the AGM. The AGM ought to be attendable in this day and age by personal appearance OR videolink and the auditor should always be in attendance – if not the people have no guarantee that they are being given the real audit report, and there is no guarantee that serious findings that the auditor wanted to have commuicated to the owners will be portrayed with the necessary gravity, or just explained as if they were harmless and made a joke of by the embarrassed Board.

Anyway, here is the letter I wrote:

Dear Sirs,

I was only able in this 66 page document which I downloaded from the OECD website to see less than half a page of the most basic information on the topic of external auditors.

External auditors are the most effective way to police good corporate governance, and yet the lack of any recommendations for our profession to be given teeth means that countries such as Poland who used the OECD guidelines to create their own codes and thought that they were getting the best protection available don’t have anything like the built in systemic safeguards that countries like the UK have.

One example – in the UK the auditor has the right to attend the AGM. They must be given notice of it and have the right to address it in matters concerning their report. In Poland there is no such right and the OECD code is where the authorities point to show that there is no need of it. They are using the brevity of the code as an excuse for poor practice, and the result is that stock listed companies are able to call AGMs where they talk around the findings of auditors, often dead-batting our recommendations and we are not even given the right to be present and put the record straight.

My reason for writing is to ask to have the views of the audit profession heard more forcefully in a – hopefully near future – reworking of the Code. I believe that IFAC would be able to place much more technically high-powered people than myself to your disposal when the time comes, but if not I’m happy to give time to this as a public service. The way things are now I deeply feel that the code develops very well some aspects of governance, such as Directors’ duties, but gives so small a role to the natural enforcers and advisors on governance in client firms, namely our profession, and impose on us duties without according us any powers – or recommending the according to us of powers whether by national law or by contract – as to constitute a missed opportunity for good.

Had someone asked me, before I had opened the pdf, to guess at how many of the 66 sides would be dealing with the question of external verification, I would have said 5 to 10. I add that just as a quantifier of how relatively important to the whole I believe the topic is, and therefore as well and indication of its degree of under-representation, in my opinion, in the document.

The above is my individual view, not necessarily the view of all my colleagues.

Best regards,

David J. James

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Motivating employees during the economic slowdown and recovery – TGC Legal Alert

June 1, 2011 1 comment

Angel with mobile phone

It's sculpturally official - angels DO use mobile phones - should your employees be any exception?

TGC have sent the following Legal Alert

Dear Quoracy.com subscribers,

In recent weeks two business breakfasts were held about additional employee benefits and latest trends in non-cash motivation. Both meetings were met with enormous interest from our clients and key issues were the subject of heated debate. The meetings were led by TGC Group experts in HR management, labour law and taxes. We have set out below a summary of the main topics of discussion. In case of you are interest in these subjects, we will organise the next meetings in our new, much larger conference centre at ul. Hrubieszowska 2.

Revival on the labour market

The Polish economy has not been affected too much by the global economic crisis. During the second half of 2010 companies recruited more staff than a year ago, and from the beginning of 2011 the amount of job vacancies in recruitment portals have gradually increased. According to various research, half of Polish employees plan to change jobs in 2011. Mostly these will be the best qualified and mobile people: mid-level professionals and managers.

During the economic slowdown people looking for new jobs are motivated by the fear of job loss due to economic problems of their current employer. However, during the market recovery employees are determined to improve their situation by achieving a higher salary or position. There is also higher pressure for salary raises or increase of non-cash benefits, as in 2008/2009 a large number of employers reduced benefits and cut labour costs.

The most popular non-cash benefits

The ranking of the most popular non-cash benefits in Poland has not changed for many years:

  1. Mobile phone
  2. Private medical care
  3. Laptop
  4. Free sport and recreation (swimming pool, gym, etc.)
  5. Subsidy of training costs
  6. Additional insurance
  7. Company car
  8. Additional pension plan

In the opinion of employees the most attractive benefits are currently various forms of subsidising training and professional development. More and more employers see training not as a cost but as a long-term investment in company development.

After the amendment of the Labour Code provisions on developing professional qualifications of employees, which entered into force on 16 July 2010, it is in the interest of employers to regulate in writing any situation where professional training of an employee is supported. This way in future there can be no doubt as to whether there is implied consent of the employer to incur costs and to provide time off for training. Also, the employee’s obligation to reimburse the costs of education in case of termination of employment should be regulated in writing.

Tailor-made motivation systems

The essence of the motivation is to find such resources and solutions to properly hit the individual needs and expectations of employees. The starting point for the conscious use of incentive mechanisms is to identify those needs.

The main motivational factors are salary, working conditions, professional development and personal success. The strength of individual factors varies with the level of education, type of work and employee’s position in the company. The lower the level of education, the less complicated the job in the company will be, and the stronger the factor remuneration will be.

However, in case of well educated employees performing more responsible jobs key factors in motivating are non-cash incentives such as acquiring new knowledge, the possibility of personal self-fulfilment, career development, broadening the scope of autonomy and responsibility, and the prestige of the position.

Employee preferences also change with age and seniority. For young workers beginning their careers the most important factors are the opportunity to perform interesting tasks, the use of modern tools of work, good relations within the company and regular feedback on work results. But for workers with several years of experience important factors are attractive salary and benefits, career opportunities, independence and stability of employment.

Whom and how to motivate during economic crisis?

The first reaction of employers to the global economic crisis was control of labour costs, which are a significant part of total operational costs. Today, companies structure remuneration systems in such a way that they are part of the risk management system, allowing for flexible changes in salary and non-cash benefits in accordance with the needs of employees and the financial situation of the company. That is the role of various types of performance-related bonuses, but it is not the only role.

When revenues fall due to economic slowdown, management boards and HR departments face a difficult challenge: how to dispose of fewer incentives to avoid loss of key employees during difficult times. The most commonly used solutions include i.e.:

  • Retention bonus for key staff
  • Performance pay for best results

Employers can also use a wide range of possibilities to motivate staff without additional cost, but only with greater involvement of managers. Such solutions may include e.g. greater differentiation of duties, flexible working time, mentoring or simply more frequent and more detailed feedback provision.

The future of non-cash benefits

During the period of recovery the pressure on salary increases begins to force employers to seek other methods – than simple pay raises – of attracting and retaining employees. Especially young employees of Generation Y appreciate the ability to fulfil their passion and work-life balance. In the nearest future good salaries will not be enough to attract young professionals and managers.

More and more employers are coming to understand that they must take care of their staff not only just as employees, but also as people. Global companies are starting to carry out HR policies promoting balance of work and private life as well as personal development.

Contact

Should you require additional information or advice on these matters, please contact our experts:

Dorota Strzelec

Consultant/ Occupational Psychologist

HR Management Department

T: +48 22 295 33 28
E: dstrzelec

Marcin Eckert

Legal Adviser

Director of Tax Department

T: +48 22 295 33 80
E: meckert

Agnieszka Janowska

Legal Adviser

Director of the Labour Law Department

T: +48 22 295 33 30

E: ajanowska

TGC Corporate Lawyers

ul. Hrubieszowska 2

01-209 Warsaw, Poland

T: +48 22 295 33 00

F: +48 22 295 33 01

E: tgc

W: http://www.tgc.eu

Alerts on this site are subject to the General Disclaimer set out on the page of that name.

Related articles

Business and Tax Newsletter Hungary 4/2011

May 20, 2011 Leave a comment

Regions of Hungary with their regional centres

Image via Wikipedia

Baker Tilly Hungary kindly sent the following link to their valued Business and Tax letter for this month.

Tisztelt Hölgyem/Uram,

A Baker Tilly Hungária megjelentette legújabb „Business & Tax Newsletter” című kiadványát, melyet

a következő linkre kattintva tekinthet meg (a „Hírlevelek” boxban): Newsletter 4/2011

Hírlevelünk témái:

· Társasági adóbevallás

· Kettős adóztatást elkerülő egyezmények

· Éves beszámolók közzététele

· Transzferár nyilvántartással kapcsolatos határidők

Hírlevelünk Acrobat Reader szoftverrel olvasható, mely ingyenesen letölthetõ a következõ helyről:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Amennyiben hírlevelünket hasznosnak találja, és szeretné, hogy mások is megkapják, vagy a jövőben

nem szertné, hogy hírlevelünket megküldjük Önnek, akkor kérjük, ezt a newsletter

címre küldött e-mail-ben jelezze.

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