Academic Prizes
Various merit-based academic prizes are offered within the Faculties of Commerce and Law and by other organisations to students who excel in their studies and research.
Students enrolled in the various tax programmes offered by UCT have been the recipients of the IBFD-UCT award and the Norton Rose Fullbright National Tax Thesis Competition.
International Fiscal Association Poster Programme
The International Fiscal Association (IFA) poster programme aims to promote students to study and discuss international taxation. The annual programme is open to a maximum of ten students graduating in international taxation who are writing a thesis on a theoretical or practical subject.
Participation in the IFA poster programme allows students the possibility to:
• attend the Annual IFA Congress free of registration fee;
• exhibit a Poster, indicating the main issues and parts of their thesis, in the Congress premises;
• to discuss with interested Congress participants the issues of their thesis.
IFA Basel 2015
On the occasion of the IFA Annual Congress 2015 in Basel, Switzerland, Louise Moller, a UCT International Tax Masters student presented a poster dealing with international tax transparency and taxpayers’ rights. The poster and accompanying brochure may be accessed here.
IFA Cape Town 2024
On the occasion of the IFA Annual Congress 2024 in Cape Town, Robert Hare, a UCT PhD in Law candidate presented a poster dealing with the development of the South African income tax regime governing non-profit entities with reference to the concepts of social enterprise and impact investing. The accompanying poster and brochure may be accessed here.
For further information please visit: https://www.ifa.nl/research-awards/poster-programme
International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) Publications
UCT has an academic cooperation agreement with the IBFD that enables access for UCT staff & students to the IBFD’s most comprehensive tax research database, publication opportunities, and collaboration.
Research performed at UCT by students has led to several publications, including the following.
“Is There Evidence of Increasing Harmonization in the Interpretation of Tax Treaties by Courts in Their Reference to Foreign Court Decisions? A Study of South African Case Law” by R Carvalho, I Daniels, M Dewar and W Sahabodien.
The research upon which this article was based was awarded the first prize for the IBFD Global Tax Treaties Commentaries Universities Project in 2017.
In this article, the authors consider the use by South African courts of the decisions and reasoning in the case law of other countries with regard to the South African interpretation of tax treaties and other international treaties and conventions seeking evidence of convergence or divergence in interpretations applied.
“New Trends in the Definition of Permanent Establishment: South Africa” by Michiel Eksteen (with Professor Johann Hattingh)
The book “New Trends in the Definition of Permanent Establishment”, published in 2019 as part of the long-standing EC and International Tax Law Series by IBFD, comprises research based on the proceedings and working documents of an annual seminar held in Milan in November 2018. The book provides a detailed and comprehensive study on the definition of permanent establishment (PE). The chapter for South Africa, written by Michiel Eksteen during his research for an LLM in International Taxation with Professor Johann Hattingh, provides an in-depth analysis of the domestic tax regime for PEs and actual tax treaty application and practices.
“Evolution and Process: A Critical Assessment of the Fiscal Terms in Uganda’s Petroleum Production Sharing Agreements” by Robert Kirunda
This article draws on part of the preparatory research performed by Robert Kirunda for a PhD in Law degree, which has been published in 2024 in the Bulletin for International Taxation.
The article considers how the evolution of the fiscal elements in Uganda’s Petroleum Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) has influenced its natural resources tax design. It assesses the decisions made, concluding that enacting some fiscal instruments as statutory requirements while placing others in the Model PSA pre-supplied to all investors improves Uganda’s position.