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Grant Thornton Baltic OÜ experts conducted an analysis of the energy networks belonging to public undertakings at the request of the Strategy Unit of the Government Office of Estonia and it was funded from measure no. 12.2 “Development of quality of policy-making” of priority axis no. 12 “Administrative Capacity” of the Cohesion Fund’s operational programme 2014-2020. The initiator and partner of the project is the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

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.

The international business advisory network Grant Thornton has been conducting research on this topic for 17 years, and the results show that the number of female executives has gradually grown each year, but this year’s study revealed that only 31% of executives around the world are female.

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 certain cases, companies have an obligation to appoint a data protection officer. This obligation applies both to companies that process data themselves and to companies that process data from other companies. The data protection officer must also be recruited or outsourced by public authorities.

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.

On 16 July 2020, the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) passed judgment C-311/18 (Schrems II), invalidating the US-EU certificate programme Privacy Shield, which ensures data transmission security.

In addition to the pandemic the 2020 is memorable as the year or record growth in cybercrime. According to the FBI the USA companies have reported a 400% growth in cyber-attacks and 68% more companies reported of fraud.

The restrictions established due to the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted transfer pricing within international corporations. Even if the restrictions were to be eased, undertakings would face major uncertainty about risks and comparables for determining market value.

Most companies view an IT audit as an expense, but experts say in reality, it helps companies to save money – especially if it’s conducted at the right time. An IT audit is a possibility to obtain an external view of the information system in current use.