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The sudden surge in remote working, online shopping, digital health and virtual learning boosted demand for business technology and communications solutions. At first glance, the future of technology companies may seem cloudless, but in fact, many of them predict that customer orders will decrease in the future. Find out, what challenges the technology sector is facing in the near future:

Store data correctly and securely, and more importantly, use the data the same way, and you might well find that the benefits easily exceed any direct monetary gains. An expert explains how to make maximum use of data for turning a profit.

The coronavirus restrictions have put many employers in a very difficult situation. When turnover is down, it’s time to analyse what would lead the company through the difficult times – applying for a new salary compensation from the government, temporary pay cuts, leave or layoffs.

The coronavirus crisis, which started a little more than a year ago, changed quite a few things in employment relationships. One of the most important changes has been the widespread use of working from home offices. Provided that the nature of the job had some degree of compatibility with the format, employees were allowed to work remotely by companies and organisations where this had not previously been the practice.

Grant Thornton Baltic conducted a survey among companies to find out how many of them are consciously and purposefully engaged in anti-money laundering. Look into the results and test your company!

Grant Thornton Baltic’s audit partner Aivar Kangust, who has been a sworn auditor for almost 30 years, points out that while indeed an audit probably wouldn’t benefit a small business very much, directors of small businesses should really be more inclined to ask for advice from auditors and business consultants – no one can possibly know everything, but it’s always good to talk to someone who does know.

In the case of the Finnish tax authorities and A Oy, we can see how incompetent preparation of transfer pricing documentation can create a large administrative burden for the company. Although the case ended in A Oy's favor, they had to spend time and money to have the decision of the Finnish tax authorities to adjust the taxpayer's transfer prices and add additional income tax on the adjusted profits annulled.

Grant Thornton has released a new guide to help international entrepreneurs navigate transfer pricing regulations in different countries and keep up with recent changes.

Based on the rules in force until the end of 2020, Estonia was entitled to tax wages of non-residents starting from day one if the entity making the payment was located in Estonia. If the payer was located abroad, , the right of taxation in Estonia arose only if the employee had been in Estonia for the purpose of employment for 183 days.

In the beginning of the year, several tax changes were introduced in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

It will soon be time to prepare annual reports for the financial year 2020. Estonian companies with parent companies in the UK will have to take into account new rules.

An annual report can be a great calling card and the secret to doing business more successfully, even though Estonian business people aren’t all that active in submitting them. Last year was an exception: the deadline for submission of annual financial statements was postponed by several months and a larger number of the reports came in on time.

Under a European Union directive, publicly listed companies must adopt the European Single Electronic Format, ESEF. But they will probably not have to file ESEF format annual reports for another year.

After the year of the coronavirus, there is good reason to review the value of a company’s assets with particular care. Even more, because the value of some assets may instead have increased in these muddled times, as we heard on the Äripäev Radio programme ‘Kasvukursil’, on which Mart Nõmper, Sworn Auditor and Head of Audit and Assurance Services, and Mikk Mägi, Head of Financial Advisory at the pan-Baltic audit, outsourcing and advisory services provider Grant Thornton Baltic, discussed asset valuation.

In January WhatsApp announced that it is changing its data policies so that the users only options are either to agree to their data policy and make data about them available to Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp, and any of its chosen third parties or not use the service. Grant Thornton Baltic's Head of Data Protection and Cybersecurity Maili Torma opens up the subject.

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