2013 Business Links Seminars

Information about Business Links seminars held in 2013.

CATGR Business Links seminar: Building trade infrastructure with China and Asia-Pacific countries

6 September 2013, 12.30pm

Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 2, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington

In June 2013 a New Zealand ministerial task force was formed to review all risks in the New Zealand-to-China supply chain. Trade Minister Tim Groser asked all agencies ‘to reflect carefully on their own long-term strategies’ and proposed increased investment in the ‘infrastructure’ of the China-New Zealand trade relationship. Tax law and practice are a key trade risk. In New Zealand’s trade relationships with China and a large number of Asia-Pacific countries, major tax risks are VAT/GST and other sales taxes on goods and services. These taxes form the largest single source of central government revenue in China, as they do in many low and middle income countries in the Asia-Pacific. They have growing importance to state-building and good governance throughout the region.

The VAT/GST is a young tax first implemented in Europe in the 1950s. It is a ‘legal transplant’ in the Asia-Pacific: still being implemented in China 30 years after small initial steps in 1984; adopted fully in New Zealand in 1986; and adopted in most other Asia-Pacific countries except, most notably, in the USA, Malaysia (and India). This seminar seeks to identify major VAT/GST challenges for businesses, governments and researchers in the region and to discuss some work currently being undertaken by these three groups and its possible impact on New Zealand and its businesses.

The seminar will be chaired by Robin Oliver, MNZM, Director, Oliver Shaw, and former Deputy Commissioner of IRD. David White will talk about his research carried out in the Asia-Pacific region in 2012 on the Asia-Pacific VAT/GST research and stakeholder network gaps and possible ways of addressing these challenges. As commentators, John Cantin and Marie Pallot will respectively give business advisor and official perspectives on the topic.

CATGR Business Links seminar: Professor David Emmanuel—Out of control? Where are we headed with accounting standard setting?

15 August 2013, 5.30pm

Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 2, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington

The establishment of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was regarded as a major milestone in the harmonisation of accounting practices across countries.  Currently, in excess of 100 countries state that they have adopted international financial reporting standards.  Early research shows a reduction in firms’ cost of capital, some across-industry information flows positively affecting investment decisions, and a reduction in home country investment bias, at least among countries that have good legal enforcement provisions, with the greatest gains being in countries with German derived code-law legal systems. However more recently there has been a growing disquiet about the effect of international accounting standards on financial reporting, and this disquiet is not restricted to large listed enterprises.

At this seminar, David Emanuel looks at two current issues affecting financial reporting.  The first is the on-going work on the Conceptual Framework, and the second is the recently released second exposure draft on accounting for leases, which is a joint (US) Financial Accounting Standards Board/IASB project.  His view is that both of these projects have major problems, and some of these problems will be discussed at this seminar.  He also will talk briefly about the (lack of) accountability that is a feature of the IASB setup.

CATGR & XRB Business Links seminar: My time at the IASB and challenges for the future—A conversation with Warren McGregor

14 March 2013, 4.30 pm

Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 2, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington

Warren McGregor was an inaugural member of the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB).  During his time on the Board, which spanned 10 years and finished with him holding the position of Acting Vice Chairman, he directly participated in perhaps the most momentous change in financial reporting the world has seen.  He will share his personal experiences of the IASB's journey, which he describes as often tumultuous. The Board was established initially as a type of accounting ‘think tank’ with a mandate to develop high-quality accounting standards that could be adopted on a voluntary basis by countries around the world.  However, it soon gained an international constituency that thrust it into the hurly burly of international accounting standard setting. Before it knew it, the Board was faced with not only resolving challenging technical issues but also dealing with the politics and other pressures that accompany attempts to change accounting practices in highly controversial areas. Professor McGregor will discuss some of the critical events that took place during this period, including the impact of some of the events on the people directly involved.  He will also examine some of the challenges now facing the Board including bringing the USA, Japan and India into the IFRS family.

CAGTR seminar—Professor Miranda Stewart

28 February 2013, 1.00 pm

Railway Station West Wing, Room 129

This presentation will discuss the general theory and approach behind a forthcoming edited book Tax, Law and Development (Yariv Brauner and Miranda Stewart, eds) (Edward Elgar, 2013). While acknowledging fully the challenge of tax competition in a global economy, this book calls for new understanding – from a legal and accounting perspective as well as from economics – of the role and process of taxation and tax reform for development, in a global era. The book rejects calls to end taxation of mobile capital even if this may be perceived to be a theoretical economic inevitability due to the difficulty of collection in an uncooperative environment. Instead, we prefer new approaches to economic development (including approaches of Bill Easterly and Dani Rodrik).

These new approaches suggest we must abandon – or significantly downplay – the dominant normative approaches to tax policy, replacing these with contextualized, diverse, partial and incremental tax law reform approaches that take seriously the legal, social and political context. The book collects work from innovative legal scholars who examine the role of law in national and international tax regimes across a range of topical tax issues, from the perspective of countries including China, Brazil, South Africa, India and the United States. Chapters discuss the reform of tax laws that are central to economic globalization, including tax incentives for foreign direct investment, their relationship with tax treaties and other international tax law, the problem of how to address fundamental equity concerns, and institutions of budgeting, tax law making and administration in a global era.