Voluntary disclosure programmes and tax amnesties: an international appraisal

Tax amnesties are government programs that typically allow a short period of time for tax evaders to voluntarily repay previously evaded taxes without being subject to penalties and prosecution that discovery of such tax evasion normally brings. Tax amnesties differ widely in terms of coverage, tax types, and incentives offered. A state’s Voluntary Disclosure Programme is another avenue available to taxpayers to assist them in resolving their state tax delinquencies. This programme is an on-going programme as compared to a tax amnesty, which is there for a limited time period only. The main goal of the research was to describe the tax amnesty and the voluntary disclosure programmes in South Africa and to assess their advantages and disadvantages. This thesis also discussed another form of voluntary disclosure programme, referred to as an Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programme, which allows taxpayers with unreported foreign bank accounts, and presumably unreported foreign income, to voluntarily disclose their affairs. The study found that, due to tax amnesties, Government raises more tax revenue not only in the short run from collecting overdue taxes but also by bringing former non-filers back into the tax system for the long run. It was also found that, initially short-run revenue brought in from overdue taxes will be positive for the first amnesty and then decline each time the amnesty is offered repeatedly. The reason for the decline in revenue might be that tax amnesties provide incentives for otherwise honest taxpayers to start evading taxes because they will anticipate the offering of future amnesties, thereby weakening tax compliance. The costs associated with amnesty programmes include negative long run revenue impact and also that amnesty programmes reduce compliance by taxpayers in the long-run. In South Africa tax amnesties, especially the voluntary disclosure programme, are likely to be successful since they will increase the revenue yield and also bring non-filers back on the tax rolls

Volatility transmission across South African financial markets: does the bull – bear distinction matter?

The volatility transmission in financial markets has important implications for investment decision making, portfolio diversification and overall macroeconomic stability. This paper analyses volatility transmission across four South African financial markets that is the stock, bond, money and foreign exchange markets, using daily data for the period 2000-2010. It also shows whether the volatilities in the SA financial markets present a different behaviour in bull and bear market phases. The effects of the international markets volatility to the local markets volatility was also looked at in this study. To obtain estimates of market volatility, the study experimented with various volatility models that include the GARCH, EGARCH and TARCH. To examine volatility interaction and the transmission of volatility shocks, a VAR model was estimated together with block exogeneity, impulse response and variance decomposition. The study found that there is limited volatility transmission across the SA financial markets. The study also found that the money market is the most exogenous of all markets since the other three financial markets volatility is insignificant to the money market (see impulse response results). For the bond market, volatility transmission was characterized with a decreasing trend. With regard to international markets volatility, it concluded that, the shocks in the international markets will eventually affect the movement in the local markets. The results also highlighted that, world and local markets are important in accelerating the volatility transmission in SA financial markets depending on whether they are in their bull or bear phases. In the case of South Africa, the study found that volatility transmission across markets is higher during bear market periods than bull market periods. Basing on the study results which show that the volatility transmission is limited across SA financial markets, the implication to local and international investors is that there is a greater potential for diversifying risk by investing in different South African financial markets

Analysis of Volatility transmission across South African Financial Markets

This paper analyses volatility transmission across four South African financial markets, using daily data for the period 2000-2009. These are the stock, bond, money and foreign exchange markets. The paper applies the TARCH procedure to the returns from the South African financial markets in order to estimate the cross-market volatility transmission. Results show that volatility transmission exists in South African financial markets on a weak form, with each market explaining its own volatility. The paper found transmission between stocks market and foreign exchange, and between foreign exchange and bond markets