"Pay Now, Argue Later" Rule – Before and After the Tax Administration Act

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is entrusted with the duty of collecting tax on behalf of the South African government. In order to ensure effective and prompt collection of taxes, the payment of tax is not suspended pending an objection or an appeal, unless directed otherwise. This is also known as the "pay now, argue later" rule, and, for value-added tax purposes, is provided for in terms of section 36 of the Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991. The "pay now, argue later" rule in terms of section 36 of the Value-Added Tax Act prima facie infringes on a taxpayer's right of access to the courts as envisaged in section 34 of the Constitution. This is due to the fact that a taxpayer is obliged to pay tax before being afforded the opportunity to challenge the assessment in a court. In Metcash Trading Ltd v Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service, the Constitutional Court held the "pay now, argue later" rule in terms of section 36 to be constitutional. Olivier, however, does not agree with the court on several matters. Amongst the problems she indicates are that the taxpayer does not have access to the courts at the time the rule is invoked, and that the court did not consider the fact that there might be less invasive means available which would ensure that SARS's duty is balanced with the taxpayer's right of access to the courts. Guidelines were also issued which provide legal certainty regarding the factors SARS may consider in determining whether the payment of tax should be suspended or not. These guidelines also evoked some points of criticism. Since 1 October 2012, the "pay now, argue later" rule has been applied in terms of section 164 of the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011. The question arises whether this provision addresses the problems identified in respect of section 36 of the Value-Added Tax Act and the guidelines. In comparing these sections, only slight differences emerged. The most significant difference is that section 164(6) of the Tax Administration Act stipulates that the enforcement of tax be suspended for a period when SARS is considering a request for suspension. Section 164(6) does not provide a solution to the problems identified regarding section 36 of the Value-Added Tax Act. It is even possible that this section could give rise to further problems. Therefore, the legislature has failed to address the imbalance between the duties of SARS and the right of a taxpayer to access the courts.   

Modeling Eddy Current Losses in HTS Tapes Using Multiharmonic Method

Due to the highly nonlinear electrical resistivity of high temperature superconducting (HTS) materials, computing the steady-state eddy current losses in HTS tapes, under time-periodic alternating current excitation, can be time consuming when using a time-transient method (TTM). The computation can require several periods to be solved with a small time-step. One alternative to the TTM is the multiharmonic method (MHM) where the Fourier basis is used to approximate the Maxwell fields in time. The method allows obtaining the steady-state solution to the problem with one resolution of the nonlinear problem. In this work, using the finite element method with the H−φ formulation, the capabilities of the MHM in the computational eddy current loss modeling of HTS tapes are scrutinized and compared against the TTM.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Modelling chemical composition in electric systems – implications to the dynamics of dye-sensitised solar cells

Classical electromagnetism provides limited means to model electric generators. To extend the classical theory in this respect, additional information on microscopic processes is required. In semiconductor devices and electrochemical generators such information may be obtained by modelling chemical composition. Here we use this approach for the modelling of dye-sensitised solar cells. We simulate the steady-state current-voltage characteristics of such a cell, as well as its transient response. Dynamic simulations show optoelectronic hysteresis in these cells under transient light pulse illumination

Discretization of Sources of Integral Operators

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Discretization Schemes for Hybrid Methods

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Galerkin and de Rham Discretizations for Hybrid Methods

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Geometric methods for anisotopic inverse boundary value problems.

Electromagnetic fields have a natural representation as differential forms. Typically the measurement of a field involves an integral over a submanifold of the domain. Differential forms arise as the natural objects to integrate over submanifolds of each dimension. We will see that the (possibly anisotropic) material response to a field can be naturally associated with a Hodge star operator. This geometric point of view is now well established in computational electromagnetism, particularly by Kotiuga, and by Bossavit and and others. The essential point is that Maxwell’s equations can be formulated in a context independent of the ambient Euclidean metric. This approach has theoretical elegance and leads to simplicity of computation. In this paper we will review the geometric formulation of the (scalar) anisotropic inverse conductivity problem, amplifying some of the geometric points made in Uhlmann’s paper in this volume. We will go on to consider generalizations of this anisotropic inverse boundary value problem to systems of Partial Differential Equation, including the result of Joshi and the author on the inverse boundary value problem for harmonic k-forms