Today the whole world moves forward on two things – Hopes and Prayers. A hope that the world will come back to normal at the earliest and prayers to God, to make their hopes a reality.

It seems the hopes are hopeless as the old normal gives way to a new normal and it means to coexist and live the virus to outlive the corona pandemic.

It is a new experience for individuals and their personal lives and for a business, it is no different.

The new era demands the businesses to go through a painful reinvention and to take bold and futuristic decisions ahead. Not to forget change is the only constant and change management is an art as well an adventure.

This world is for the brave, bold and ambitious and I know nobody apart from an entrepreneur who combines all these qualities and I am sure an entrepreneur can get on to the survival mode with an enhanced passion and determination to survive, than to surrender.

Any business should adhere and adopt a more disciplined and focused approach to ensure that the business is not a history and rather it creates history.

These 20 tips are generic in nature and can be applied in any business irrespective of their nature and geography, however it should be selectively adopted to suit any business model. They provide you an insight for creating own strategy within your business and all the ideas may not be suitable for a single business in isolation. There are many more ideas that can be applied in any business as per your creativity and in depth understanding of the business.

Whatever the case, the change is inevitable and one should design, implement and embrace new changes to adapt to the changing times.

Wear your management hat and read forward. Click here

As globalisation of business transactions continues to advance, in order to address tax evasion and avoidance through offshore financial structures, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) developed the “Common Reporting Standards” (“CRS”) in July 2014, a global reporting standard for automatic exchange of financial account information.

Commonly referred as Global FATCA, the CRS is based on the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”), however, the scope for CRS is much greater than for FATCA to accommodate the requirement for various countries.

Free Zones notified by the Federal Tax Authority (FTA) are identified as Designated Zones for the purpose of UAE VAT Law.

In addition to the existing Designated Zones, FTA recently notified the following free zones as Designated Zones with effect from 18 June 2018:

• Al Ain International Airport Free Zone (Abu Dhabi);
• Al Butain International Airport Free Zone (Abu Dhabi); and
• International Humanitarian City (Jebel Ali).

Given this update, it is very important to anlayse the VAT benefits that would be available to companies dealing in such Designated Zones.

Click here to view the full list of Designated Zones