IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsarxx/v31y2017i2p117-133.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A critical analysis of whether research activities performed by universities fall within the meaning and scope of the term ‘educational services’ as intended by section 12(h) of the Value-Added Tax Act No. 89 of 1991

Author

Listed:
  • A. Herron

Abstract

According to section 12(h) of the Value-Added Tax Act No. 89 of 1991, ‘educational services’ are exempt from the levying of value-added tax as imposed by section 7(1)(a) of the Act. The Value-Added Tax Act No. 89 of 1991 does not, however, contain a definition of the term ‘educational services’ and therefore uncertainty exists in practice regarding the meaning and ambit of the term ‘educational services’ and whether research conducted by an institution providing higher education would qualify as an ‘educational service’ or not. The main objective of this article is to investigate whether research activities performed by universities qualify as educational services. In order to meet this objective, South African and international literature was analysed to determine the meaning and scope of educational services. It was found that different categories of research exist (commercial and non-commercial) and, depending on the nature of the research, the treatment is different for value-added tax purposes.

Suggested Citation

  • A. Herron, 2017. "A critical analysis of whether research activities performed by universities fall within the meaning and scope of the term ‘educational services’ as intended by section 12(h) of the Value-Added Tax Ac," South African Journal of Accounting Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 117-133, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsarxx:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:117-133
    DOI: 10.1080/10291954.2016.1159498
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10291954.2016.1159498
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10291954.2016.1159498?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsarxx:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:117-133. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rsar .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.