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Due to the emergency situation declared in Latvia for COVID-19 containment, companies as well as central and local government agencies have taken measures to protect their workers, customers and other persons against potential threats to their health in order to continue working to the extent possible in the emergency situation. Under the circumstances, a new type of information about individuals is additionally being gathered and processed, for example, whether they have any symptoms, whether the person has been in contact with anyone who might be infected, including any COVID-19 tests and their results, as well as other information relating to places someone has visited.
The government is working hard to put support measures in place for entities affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Last week the Cabinet of Ministers put into effect a number of rules concerning industries affected by the COVID-19 crisis and how employers in those industries qualify for idle-time benefit. Despite the original intention to restrict tax deadline extensions and idle-time benefit to entities operating in the listed industries, at the meeting of 26 March, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a set of criteria to make an affected entity in any industry eligible for idle-time benefit and tax holidays for up to three years. This article explores what we see as key points.
Today’s accountancy is moving towards a robotised future, as we are automating data exchange, data processing, and drafting of documents. It may seem that undertaking such automation requires some complex and expensive automation software, such as UiPath or BluePrism. That is not the case, though, as manual tasks can be automated with available tools without incurring any extra cost, but using those solutions requires at least a basic set of programming skills.
On 11 February 2020 the OECD published the final version of its transfer pricing (“TP”) guidelines for financing transactions, a document welcomed also by Latvian taxpayers within multinational enterprise groups, by tax consulting service providers, and by the State Revenue Service. We wrote several articles about the draft guidelines in 2018 so this series of articles will explore some of the changes arising from the final version. We will also look at some global trends and key aspects to be considered in analysing financing transactions according to the OECD recommendations.
Many countries have seen a rapid drop in economic activity due to COVID-19 and are trying to adopt some extraordinary tax policy measures in order to limit the damage and protect business. A fast response is crucial when it comes to mitigating the impact of the crisis. This article explores some of the tax policy measures recently adopted in Europe and Latvia.
Governments and health supervisory agencies around the world have launched an all-out fight against COVID-19, but more needs to be done. Several countries have quarantined millions of people, and if the situation deteriorates, more countries might follow suit. COVID-19 has become a serious risk for the Latvian economy as well as globally.
Picking up where we left off in last week’s article “Unified approach to addressing tax challenges in digital economy,” this article explores recent proposals for international taxation rules within Pillar One of the OECD’s Work Programme.
Technology plays a huge role in many industries and particularly affects bookkeeping and financial accounting. Specialist digital skills and experience of working with state-of-the-art technological solutions as well as the skill of creating and developing digital tools are key to successful financial accounting and management in your company.