By far the most significant recent transaction from a value perspective is Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc for $12.5 billion, which was motivated on the basis of Google gaining access to Motorola's portfolio of patents.

If your company is thinking of selling any capital assets and its year end is not February or March there may be a window of opportunity to do it at the lower effective tax rate for a short while.

Considered by many a different form of "capital punishment" – or at least a lifelong sentence. So investors would have paid keen attention to the tax amendments put forward in National Treasury's 2012/13 Budget, and would have watched as further judgment was handed down.

SARS will soon announce when the annual PAYE reconciliation submission season is to commence. The likelihood is that it will begin on the first working day of April (Monday April 2) and extend until the last working day of May.

The following is a summary of the tax related budget proposals announced by the Minister of Finance on 22 February 2012.

Finance minister Pravin Gordhan has kept his mid-term budget promise made in October last year to further ease exchange controls, with a series of recently announced relaxations.

The Voluntary Disclosure Programme (VDP) expired on 31 October 2011. This program allowed taxpayers who voluntarily disclosed certain defaults to SARS to be granted relief from additional taxes, penalties and interest

In July financial journalist Ann Crotty reported on the chaos that is being experienced with the registration and deregistration of companies and close corporations at the office of the newly established Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC)

The new methods of granting a measure of tax relief on the contributions made to medical schemes will be implemented from March 2012, and is expected to be followed by similar amendments to the taxing of medical expenses in 2013

The Tax Administration Bill 11 of 2011 may face constitutional challenges should it be promulgated in its current form.The Bill gives SARS much wider powers, impacts on taxpayers’ rights andcontains provisions that could affect taxpayers’ rights to hold a passport, to travel and to trade.