Classic Business

Stavros Nicolaou, public health working group leader for Businesses for South Africa & Lizeth Kruger, Dis-Chem’s national clinic manager

Mark Weetman, CEO of Unum Capital

The Davis Tax committee submitted a number of reports on the tax gap to Finance Minister Tito Mboweni and Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter in December. Its mandate, when its term of office was extended by Mboweni in February 2019, was to examine the tax gap and come up with proposals on how to close it. A "tax gap" is the difference between what is legitimately owed in taxes versus what is actually collected by the revenue service. It is the result of "tax evasion", which is the illegal practice of not paying all the tax you would legally owe if audited to the letter of the law.

Not the yawning tax deficit which is the result of the sluggish economy, runaway government spending and other factors…It is utterly uncontroversial for revenue services to go after tax dodgers, and every reasonably functional government in the world does this to varying extents. Despite this, the suggestion to audit wealthy taxpayers to close the gap has gone down like a lead balloon in the leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg and southern suburbs of Cape Town…. Michael Avery spoke to Judge Dennis Davis, about the detail of the Committee’s suggestion

BitCoin. It’s adherents are feverish, its detractors and sceptics many, the cryptocurrency world has been in thrall to another parabolic rise in the value of Bitcoin and other cryptos only to see a recent pullback of 20% revive memories of the spectacular crash of 2017. Michael Avery thinks blockchain technology is interesting and will almost certainly become more important in the future. Avery thinks he understands the finite supply of Bitcoin, the loss of faith in central banks and the store of value narrative. But, he admits to having absolutely no idea how to value it. It could be cheap at $1mil and expensive at $5 and he wouldn’t be able to put forward a coherent reason why. Farzam Ehsani, CEO and co-founder at VALR, SA’s leading bitcoin trading platform, helps him understand how you value Bitcoin.

Nesan Nair, portfolio manager at Sasfin Securities & Petri Redelinghuys, founder of Herenya Capital Advisors

As millions of South Africans returned to work today wondering what 2021 holds in store for the economy, one of the most important issues is whether people will be able to access the Covid 19 vaccine at sufficient scale to save lives and be able to do away the state of disaster and the risk adjusted levels that have been hampering business and the economy since March last year. In an interview with ENCA, President Ramaphosa said government had "always had a plan". So what is the plan and what are the timelines and rollout strategies?

Michael Avery started the New Year with a panel discussion s Government’s Covid 19 Vaccine Strategy Raises Fresh Questions with Dr Anban Pillay, Deputy Director General responsible for Health Regulation and Sector Wide Procurement of essential medicines in the Health Department and Professor Alex van den Heever, chair in the field of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies at the Wit's School of Governance.

Jasmine Opperman. Africa Analyst: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project University of Pretoria

John Jack, CEO of Galetti Corporate Real Estate

Kumaran Padayachee, CEO of Spartan SME Finance

Reyno De Beer, president of the Liberty Fighters Network