When is a debt bad or doubtful in terms of the Income Tax Act?

Bad debt deductions and doubtful debt allowances provide relief to taxpayers who would be subject to income tax on amounts accrued to them which may never be received. No definition of a bad or doubtful debt is provided in the Income Tax Act. This dissertation considered current legislation, historical court cases, academic writing and the views expressed by SARS through explanatory memoranda and directives in order to establish when a debt becomes bad or doubtful and the extent of the relief granted. This dissertation also considered the future of the doubtful debt allowance in light of the change of accounting standards from IAS 39 to IFRS 9. There are no specific requirements for a debt to become bad or doubtful. Whether a debt is bad is a factual question taking into account all relevant facts. Whether a debt is doubtful and the extent of the allowance granted is determined by the Commissioner, but that determination must be reasonable. The Commissioner relies on IAS 39 rules of impairment as the starting point for determination of a doubtful debt allowance. IFRS 9 determines impairment in a significantly different manner to IAS 39, abandoning the requirement that a “loss event” must have occurred. Adoption of IFRS 9 will result in a change to the determination of doubtful debt allowances, for example, by reducing the generally accepted rate of 25% of identified doubtful debts or by requiring the taxpayer to compile a list of debts which would have qualified as doubtful under IAS 39

Japan and the Greater Mekong Sub-region: Hegemony in the Making or Hegemony Already Established ?

要約のみTohoku University尾野嘉邦課

Contact-Aided Invariant Extended Kalman Filtering for Legged Robot State Estimation

This paper derives a contact-aided inertial navigation observer for a 3D bipedal robot using the theory of invariant observer design. Aided inertial navigation is fundamentally a nonlinear observer design problem; thus, current solutions are based on approximations of the system dynamics, such as an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), which uses a system's Jacobian linearization along the current best estimate of its trajectory. On the basis of the theory of invariant observer design by Barrau and Bonnabel, and in particular, the Invariant EKF (InEKF), we show that the error dynamics of the point contact-inertial system follows a log-linear autonomous differential equation; hence, the observable state variables can be rendered convergent with a domain of attraction that is independent of the system's trajectory. Due to the log-linear form of the error dynamics, it is not necessary to perform a nonlinear observability analysis to show that when using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and contact sensors, the absolute position of the robot and a rotation about the gravity vector (yaw) are unobservable. We further augment the state of the developed InEKF with IMU biases, as the online estimation of these parameters has a crucial impact on system performance. We evaluate the convergence of the proposed system with the commonly used quaternion-based EKF observer using a Monte-Carlo simulation. In addition, our experimental evaluation using a Cassie-series bipedal robot shows that the contact-aided InEKF provides better performance in comparison with the quaternion-based EKF as a result of exploiting symmetries present in the system dynamics.Comment: Published in the proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems 201

MOLECULAR SCAFFOLD DEVELOPMENT OF TERTIARY AMINE CHALCONES FOR INHIBITION OF LYCOPENE CYCLASE IN FRUIT

poster abstractLycopene, a known anti-oxidant, is transformed into β-carotene and other carotenoids by a class of enzymes referred to as lycopene cyclases. Developing potential inhibitors of lycopene cyclases could yield further understanding of the structural and functional properties of these enzymes and eventually serve to manipulate lycopene levels in fruits and vegetables. Previously reported aryl tertiary amine-containing compounds, when protonated at physiological pH, act as transition-state inhibitors of these cyclizing enzymes. Our proposed scaffold yields a series of substituted chalcones containing the core structure of the known inhibitor N,N-diethyl-N-[2-(4-methylphenoxy)ethyl]amine (MPTA). However, the initial scaffold design involved the aldol condensation of a deactivated aldehyde and ketone under relatively harsh conditions. Though various methods exist for this specific transformation, we developed a novel, safe, cost-effective application of the aldol condensation using a domestic microwave and potassium carbonate with iodine impregnated alumina. Reaction conditions including catalyst, base, and microwave intensity were optimized. Herein, we report the molecular scaffold development and synthesis of several tertiary amine chalcones with the potential for activity against lycopene cyclases in fruits and vegetables