Accounting Department Sweeps the Board with New Tax Thesis Competition

The Accounting Department in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Cape Town made a clean sweep of prizes at the inaugural 2008 Deneys Reitz National Tax Thesis Competition, bringing home R20 000 for the Department.

The awards were made at an impressive gala dinner in Johannesburg to which many of the country’s most notable tax experts were invited. Advocate Eddie Broomberg gave the main address and stressed the need for collaboration between academic tax research, business and National Treasury to ensure appropriate tax legislation and policy.

Judging was undertaken by a team of tax experts at Deneys Reitz, Sasol and FirstRand (the co-sponsors) with the final adjudication of the shortlisted candidates examined by Advocate Peter Solomon SC.

The winner in the Doctoral category was Dr Matthew Marcus, whose thesis was supervised jointly by Associate Professor Jennifer Roeleveld. He won the award for his thesis titled "A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the South African Tax System 1995-2005". Advocate Solomon described the thesis as "impressive."

Ilse Gaum won the Honours award for her research report titled "Withholding Tax on Immovable property Disposals by Non-Residents". Advocate Solomon said: "The dissertation contains an impressive and original analysis of the subject matter."

Both students were innovative in finding ways of bringing their outsize cheques on aircraft back to Cape Town. They were awarded R10 000 each for their theses and managed to bring the cardboard versions of their cheques in the cabin.

They are both graduates of UCT who went on to qualify as Chartered Accountants. Ilse is a law graduate who went through the conversion course to gain entrance into the final PGDA programme. Both students also did the BCom Honours in Taxation. Dr Marcus converted his Taxation Honours to a Masters which he then followed with a PhD.

Godfrey Howes, Head of Direct Tax, FirstRand Banking Group said the competition augured well for the future of tax research, the establishment of a data base of tax knowledge and the ongoing development of tax policy in South Africa.

Prof Roeleveld added that the Taxation Honours course has recently been converted to a Masters because of the extremely high standard of technical reports that were being produced and the depth of the programme. Graduates of this programme were highly sought after in the tax business community, she said.

UCT’s winning team: Dr Matthew Marcus, Associate Professor Jennifer Roeleveld and Honours Student Ilse Gaum. They are seen here with Professor Peter Surtees, convenor of the Tax Honours/Masters at UCT.