Slashdot Mirror
Shuttleworth Loses $20m Battle With S. African Reserve Bank Over Expatriated Funds
An anonymous reader writes: Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has lost his long running battle with the South African Reserve Bank over a R250m exit charge ($20.5m) levied on his personal fortune when he tried to ex-patriate to his new home on the Isle of Man in 2009. The exit charge was part of a capital control system since abandoned by the South African government, which Shuttleworth had successfully argued at the Supreme Court of Appeal last year amounted to an unconstitutional tax. The Supreme Court ordered the Reserve Bank to pay Shuttleworth back.
While Shuttleworth had promised to leave the R250m in South Africa as a fund for helping others to press constitutional issues to the highest court in the land, the Reserve Bank appealed to the Constitutional Court for a final appeal — which it won this morning. The upshot being that the bank gets to hold onto the money after all. One judge did offer a dissenting opinion, however, in which he said he would have dismissed the final appeal with costs. The article notes that "The irony is that the exit charge at the heart of the matter is no longer levied on transfers going out of the country."
While Shuttleworth had promised to leave the R250m in South Africa as a fund for helping others to press constitutional issues to the highest court in the land, the Reserve Bank appealed to the Constitutional Court for a final appeal — which it won this morning. The upshot being that the bank gets to hold onto the money after all. One judge did offer a dissenting opinion, however, in which he said he would have dismissed the final appeal with costs. The article notes that "The irony is that the exit charge at the heart of the matter is no longer levied on transfers going out of the country."
Tech is made out of people. Who live on the Isle of Man, for entirely legitimate reasons.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
It's on Slashdot because it's their own website not yours. So they make the rules and decide what gets posted. If you don't like it, start your own website and leave.
The fundamental problem is wealth redistribution. It sounds good to some people but it all comes back to robbing Peter to pay Paul; most people call it stealing.
Stop and think about that for a second. A tax refund implies they are taxing you beyond what you owe, up front, and keeping the money as long as possible. Depending on your filing timing, some of that money could have been held by the government for nearly 18 months before you get money the government shouldn't have taken back.
And they don't just "give it back" -- YOU have to follow their rules and their forms and justify to them that you deserve to get the money back.
The system is really "we'll take this money from you now, a year later you can use our forms and tables to figure out if we've taken too much, and then we'll give it back, based on our criteria".
You can't use the IRS tax refunds as a sign of the gentle benevolence of the government.
You can't use the IRS tax refunds as a sign of the gentle benevolence of the government.
The words "gentle" and "benevolence" and "government" have NO business in the same sentence... Especially when you're talking about the IRS.. The IRS belongs back in the old USSR, not what passes for a "free" country..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Plenty of mental illnesses have been going on longer than civilisation. Doesn't make them normal
Yes, yes it does. Try a dictionary. It might help.
or that they should be tolerated in normal society
As before, gays have been part of normal society for longer than it's been civilized.
Its only in the last few decades with lots of gays in the media that the propaganda that its normal has been pumped out to this extent.
Right, only in the last few decades have we permitted homosexual people to admit that they exist without persecution, which is how people like yourself can be so hilariously confused: willful ignorance.
But don't worry, swings and roundabouts.
Oh, I'm not worried. I'm confident that homosexual people will continue to gain the same human rights as the rest of us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most of those countries that condemn homosexuality aren't too hot on women's rights, people that aren't the same religion as them, or people with different colored skin or birth place living with or having the same rights as them.
Intolerant people are intolerant, what a revelation.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!