Latest news with #ETI
The Citizen
4 days ago
- Business
- The Citizen
Looming tax deadline and glitches cause frustration
Additional measures were implemented to help taxpayers stay compliant – and if not for the 'procrastinators' the problem 'could have been fixed' by now. The chances of an extension to Friday's deadline are slim. Picture: AdobeStock In the run-up to this year's filing season, employers are battling to meet the deadline for submission of their annual employer reconciliation declarations to the South African Revenue Service (Sars). The deadline is Friday. Employers experienced glitches after Sars released an updated version of e@syFile, the software used to reconcile and validate the payroll data and electronic employee tax certificates submitted to Sars. Employers submit monthly declarations, and the annual declaration (EMP501) reflects all the payments made in terms of employee pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) tax, Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions, and employee tax incentive (ETI) and skills development (SDL) levies. ALSO READ: 'Sars needs to play catch up,' says Kieswetter as tax collector goes digital System issues The system error forced Sars to make additional channels and measures available to enable employers to submit their information on time, says Ettiene Retief, independent tax specialist. The new version created 'unexpected' issues where employers were unable to submit their EMP501 returns. Following complaints from several recognised controlling bodies that represent tax practitioners, Sars acknowledged the problems. It gave employers access to the older version when they could not solve their issues with the new version, and addressed issues through a dedicated email support channel. Retief says the newer version might have been incompatible with specific anti-virus programmes used by employers or tax practitioners. System updates by employer payroll systems may also have caused the incompatibility with e@syFile. 'There are also procrastinators. We have had two months to deal with issues – if people started engaging earlier, the problem could have been fixed already,' he adds. ALSO READ: Sars beats expectations by collecting R1.855 trillion in 2024/25 tax year The go-between The Sars e@syFile software plays 'middleman' in the validation and reconciliation of the employer's payroll system and the validation of the electronic IRP5 tax certificate that is submitted to Sars. This enables Sars to pre-populate the tax returns of almost four million individual taxpayers, and those with more complicated tax affairs can submit their tax returns with correct tax information. According to Sars, the three elements that must reconcile for employer submissions include: Monthly employer declarations submitted (PAYE, SDL, UIF and ETI); Payments made (excluding penalty and interest payments); and IRP5/IT3(a)s generated. The chances of an extension of Friday's deadline are slim. Sars only has a month to process the information and start pre-populating tax returns for the start of the July filing season. 'If one deadline moves, it moves everything and that causes its own complications,' says Retief. Another system glitch that frustrated taxpayers and practitioners last month was the inability to upload documentation relating to value-added tax (Vat) returns. 'As far as I am aware the issues were addressed.' ALSO READ: Sars records increase in taxpayers who filed returns Refund delays André Daniels, head of tax controversy and dispute resolution at Tax Consulting SA, says taxpayers and tax practitioners alike are reporting a surge in delayed refunds. Sars is citing 'pending verifications or audits' – but only after a manual status check is performed. 'This is not a procedural glitch – this is a systemic failure with serious financial implications,' Daniels said in a recent statement. In many cases Sars has requested further verification documentation without issuing any formal notification through eFiling or via email. 'Making matters worse, there is often no link available to upload the required documents because no verification or audit letter was ever generated.' Daniels says even if the link is provided and documentation uploaded, additional assessments are subsequently issued, stating that the 'burden of proof' was not discharged. His advice to taxpayers is to act proactively and to confirm whether any verifications or audits have been raised behind the scenes. He also advises taxpayers to use the dispute resolution steps to correct assessments where appropriate. Retief notes that Sars is constantly upgrading, adding and changing its systems and programmes as part of its modernisation and digitalisation drive. It is normal that there will be glitches. Sars is generally alerted to problems and issues through the different representative bodies. 'I know there were issues, but Sars was quick to respond and solve some of it.' This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
Edinburgh Reporter
5 days ago
- Politics
- Edinburgh Reporter
Why did the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry take so long?
Lord Hardie who was charged with conducting the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry (ETI) which cost millions and was much delayed, has responded citing operational difficulties with accommodation and internet as the reasons for some of the delay. The Edinburgh Tram Inquiry report was delivered nine years after it was instructed by then First Minister, Alex Salmond at a cost of more than £13 million. His Lordship submitted evidence to the parliamentary Finance and Public Administration Committee on Tuesday. In advance of the committee meeting at Holyrood the retired judge sent a written submission which covered many of the practical issues, saying these were reasons for the delay. He said: 'Following my appointment as chair of ETI, I had to identify suitable premises with the assistance of the Solicitor to the Inquiry, whom I had appointed immediately following my appointment, and other civil servants unconnected with the ETI. This issue is addressed in chapter 2 of my Report. I was offered and accepted the use of premises that were surplus to requirements of Creative Scotland. The rent was paid by the Scottish Government and the office premises had the appearance of a modern office with adequate IT connections. The appearance was deceptive and for almost 6 months staff at ETI struggled with inadequate IT connections which frequently failed. 'The effect on staff morale was significant and there was a considerable waste of time and money during that time. In the Report I refer to the fiasco of Vodafone failing to install a cable on different occasions for different reasons and failing to link the portals to a newly installed cabinet. 'Apart from accommodation it was necessary to appoint a Secretary whose early tasks included staffing the Inquiry office with document coders, an IT manager and others. Many of the staff were agency workers while others were civil servants electing to transfer to ETI. Because of civil service procedures the delay in civil servants, including the Secretary, moving to ETI resulted in delay to the initial progress of the Inquiry. The process of setting up the Inquiry with accommodation, staff and other resources gave the impression of our reinventing the wheel. There was little or no guidance to assist with this stage of the Inquiry. 'My first recommendation of 24 in my Report was that 'Scottish Ministers should undertake a review of public inquiries to determine the most cost-effective method of avoiding delay in the establishment of an inquiry, including consideration of establishing a dedicated unit within the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service [SCTS] and publishing regularly updated guidance for people involved in the establishment and progress of public inquiries.' Net costs Lord Hardie also recommended that in any future inquiries the costs should be reported net – and he gave his reasons why the net cost of £8.7 million was the more representative cost of the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry. He said: 'Wherever possible and in the interests of economy regarding public expenditure I used resources that had already been funded by the public purse. These included the cost of accommodation which was vacant and where the Scottish Government was the tenant and had sub-let it to a government department or agency. 'It also included the salaries of permanent civil servants who had transferred to the ETI and whose posts in their former department were not filled. Although these costs were added to the costs of the ETI as an accounting exercise, the public purse did not incur any additional expense. I am aware that not all public inquiries have adopted a similar approach. For example some may use accommodation that is not already available within the Scottish Government's portfolio of leased but vacant property; some may also use more staff recruited from outside the civil service. 'In these examples the costs will be included in the costs of the inquiry and will be additional expenditure incurred by the public purse. As I explained in my video release of the ETI Report, if the expenditure on resources already funded by the public purse was deducted from the cost of ETI, the cost at that time would have reduced from £13.1 million to £8.7 million.' Lord Hardie Chair of the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry Professor Sandy Cameron Professor Sandy Cameron, CBE, who is currently Independent Chair of the Children and Young People's Centre for Justice, gave evidence to the committee in person. He was involved in the Jersey care inquiry which was supposed to last six months and cost £6 million – but it took two years and cost £23 million. Asked about the apparently enormous cost of that inquiry he was asked if lawyers are motivated to keep the cost to a minimum. He replied: 'Legal colleagues work very much on the basis of doing what they believe that they need to do, rather than looking at how to contain and manage costs. The expectation is, 'This needs to be done. We will do it and we'll keep going until it's done.' There is a reluctance to look at other ways in which they might have done it and other ways in which they could have contained costs. To some extent, that is about the way in which legal colleagues always practice.' Professor Cameron said in his written submission that he can 'confidently predict that … inquiries will last longer than anticipated and cost more than budgeted for'. He suggested to the committee that there must be another way of conducting inquiries which 'manage the costs more effectively and deliver more rapidly for people'. He explained that the public 'lose interest' when inquiries last for a long time, and for inquiries involving survivors or victims there is 'the issue of how long it feels for them that the inquiry is taking to get to a conclusion'. The cost to the public purse in the last years has been considerable – some £91.9 million on the child abuse inquiry and £34 million on the Scottish Covid Inquiry. Michael Marra MSP who sits on the committee posed the question as to whether it might be possible to set up a judge-led public inquiry unit. Any instructions would then be sent to that unit to set up more quickly and also to keep tabs on finances. But Professor Cameron was not convinced that any such body should be judge led. He said that he thinks there is good reason for looking at an alternative to public inquiries, but explained to Craig Hoy MSP that it is important that there is a degree of independence in reviewing the outcome of any recommendations of any inquiry. Like this: Like Related
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
ATS 2025: ETI-linked mucus clearance tied to lung function gains in paediatric CF
On 19 May, at the 2025 American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Conference, researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital presented compelling evidence that functional improvement in paediatric cystic fibrosis (CF) patients receiving elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (ETI) therapy is driven by regional clearance of mucus plugs. Using advanced imaging techniques—ultrashort echo-time (UTE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and hyperpolarised xenon-129 (¹²⁹Xe) ventilation MRI—the study offered a granular view of structural and functional lung changes, offering insight into why certain patients derive greater clinical benefit from cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) modulator therapy. The prospective study enrolled 30 paediatric CF patients who underwent imaging and spirometry both before and following the initiation of CFTR modulator therapy. A total of 19 patients received ETI while 11 were started on lumacaftor/ivacaftor (LI). Each lung lobe was scored for structural abnormalities, including mucus plugging, bronchiectasis, wall thickening, and opacities. Functional outcomes were assessed via ventilation defect percentage (VDP) and percent predicted FEV₁ (ppFEV₁). ETI-treated patients demonstrated significant clinical and structural improvement across multiple domains. VDP improved by a mean of 6±6% (p<0.001), while ppFEV₁ increased by 9±12% (p=0.01). These changes were tightly correlated with a decrease in mucus scores as observed via UTE MRI. Specifically, ETI patients with a 0.5-point or greater reduction in mucus burden experienced the most substantial functional gains—12±14% increase in FEV₁ and 8±4% reduction in VDP (both p<0.01). Conversely, patients on LI showed no statistically significant improvement in either imaging or functional metrics. Other imaging markers, including consolidation, air trapping, and ground-glass opacities, improved significantly in the ETI group, while bronchiectasis and wall thickening—typically associated with irreversible airway damage—remained unchanged. In one illustrative case, a paediatric patient with the largest improvement in mucus score (−4.5) experienced a 34% rise in FEV₁ and a 14% drop in VDP, underscoring the mechanistic link between mucus clearance and restored pulmonary function. Clinically, these findings support a more nuanced understanding of how ETI therapy improves outcomes, highlighting mucus clearance as a key driver of therapeutic efficacy rather than merely a downstream effect. The use of UTE and ¹²⁹Xe MRI, which offer high-resolution, radiation-free imaging of airway pathology and ventilation, respectively, adds a valuable dimension to conventional spirometry and could play a growing role in stratifying treatment response in both clinical trials and real-world practice. This data reinforces ETI's dominant profile, particularly in the paediatric setting, where long-term structural preservation is critical. The ability to directly correlate mucus plug resolution with improvements in FEV₁ and VDP adds scientific credibility to ETI's clinical value and may inform payer decision-making by providing objective, imaging-based endpoints. With Vertex's ETI franchise continuing to set the standard, these findings raise the bar for emerging competitors in the CFTR modulator space. Future entrants, whether oral, inhaled, or gene-editing-based, will be expected not only to match ETI's functional benefits but to demonstrate similar or superior regional lung clearance and structural remodelling. The integration of advanced imaging into clinical development pipelines may prove critical for differentiation, particularly as value-based care models demand measurable outcomes tied to cost-effectiveness. Key opinion leaders interviewed by GlobalData have emphasised that non-invasive, radiation-free imaging tools such as UTE and Xe MRI will be instrumental in guiding therapy in the next era of CF care. Their use may enhance treatment personalisation and enable more precise forecasting of long-term benefit, critical factors in an increasingly competitive and outcomes-driven market. "ATS 2025: ETI-linked mucus clearance tied to lung function gains in paediatric CF" was originally created and published by Pharmaceutical Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Herald Scotland
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Energy transition clashes with full-blown employment rights revolution
The UK's offshore energy industry has played a fundamental part in powering the nation for over five decades. Robert Gordon University's Energy Transition Institute (ETI) estimates that 154,000 UK jobs are supported by the offshore energy sector, with 120,000 of those in the oil and gas industry. As the country races to meet its net zero commitments, the offshore energy sector is in a position of unprecedented change and uncertainty. The ETI estimates that even a well-managed transition to renewable energy will see oil and gas workforce numbers decline to around 87,000 by 2030. As jobs in oil and gas decrease, the National Grid estimates that, in turn, 400,000 roles will need to be filled to build the workforce required to sustain net zero targets – 260,000 of which will be newly created for the purposes of the transition. The ETI also suggests that 90% of the existing offshore workforce has transferable skills applicable to clean energy roles. This gives cause for optimism. However, employers within the offshore energy sector face some challenges. The energy profits levy (the so called 'windfall tax'), which applies a 78% headline rate of tax to oil and gas companies, is causing many internationally mobile companies to divert their investment overseas. A further challenge is ensuring that the clean energy jobs of the future are available at the same time as traditional roles decline. That can only be achieved through significant public and private sector investment, combined with a fast and efficient planning regime. Terms and conditions will also be crucial: oil and gas jobs are traditionally very well paid. Clean energy jobs will need to offer an attractive combination of pay, benefits and working arrangements, otherwise talent will be lost overseas. To underpin all of this, an employment rights regime that is stable and incentivises employers to invest in training and skills development is essential. The crucial question is does the government's Employment Rights Bill (ERB) achieve this? The ERB proposes to significantly enhance rights and protections for employees. Key features of the bill include: day one unfair dismissal rights; greater trade union access; the end of fire and rehire; and offers of guaranteed hours to zero hours workers. From the point of view of the worker, these appear a cause for celebration. But there may be unintended consequences. The new rights may cause employers to take a more conservative approach to recruitment. At a time when recruitment and training to fulfil the needs of the energy transition is critical, this may be less than helpful for those in the offshore industry. With potentially increased union membership across the workforce, employers will need to recognise that if salaries are not consistent with those historically offered in the oil and gas industry, disagreements over pay packages may cause significant disruption. These changes may simply make it harder for employers in the sector to adjust to the needs of the energy transition. The government has identified the autumn of 2026 for the implementation of the majority of rights under the ERB. With this in mind, employers in the offshore industry may feel it is beneficial to accelerate investment and workforce planning decisions related to the energy transition. Time will tell if the government's plans for energy transition and an employment rights revolution can sit in harmony with one another.
Daily Record
12-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Record
Paramedics fear patients will die after vital kit removed from ambulances
Paramedic staff launch petition over plan to cut 'gold standard' breathing tube. Paramedics fear patients could die after a vital piece of kit has been removed from ambulances. Last year, the Record exclusively told how five pieces of equipment fail every day, causing potential harm or death. Crews also said they were concerned about a proposed reduction in the supply and use of endotracheal intubation (ETI) hampering efforts to save lives. The piece of kit is seen by paramedics as 'gold-standard', providing oxygen to the airway in an emergency. But the paramedics' warnings were not heeded and this week the ETI was replaced by an i-gel Supraglottic Airway Management System. However, it's feared there are some instances where only ETI will work. Edinburgh paramedic Alex Vesco has started a petition protesting at the withdrawal. A fellow paramedic, who has worked for the Scottish Ambulance Service for 20 years, said: 'I really cannot understand the reasoning. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. 'The i-gels these days are much better and a good alternative but they are not the gold standard in airway maintenance, especially if oedema (swelling) is in the airway. 'The number of times I have saved a life using an endotracheal tube, when an i-gel wouldn't have worked, is in double figures.' The paramedic blames 'skill fatigue' and cost and says not enough effort is made to ensure staff are keeping up their skill levels in using equipment. Now, when the equipment is required crews will have to call out a critical care team or a helicopter crew. The paramedic added: 'It will be a postcode lottery now whether a patient lives or dies. In rural areas help could be 40 minutes or more away and if that's the case the patient will die. A colleague added: 'This decision has been made with no consultation, no published assessment, and no explanation to staff or the public.' Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: 'It seems like an incredibly backward step to remove lifesaving equipment from ambulances.' A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesperson said: 'ETI is no longer considered the gold standard approach. 'Improving survival for cardiac arrest patients is the aim of this measure, which has already been adopted across the rest of the UK.'
