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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.

The representatives of the board of the Auditors’ Association met Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice Tõnis Saar and Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice Viljar Peep in February on the topic of developing the Commercial Register and updating register data.

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 January and February 2020, Grant Thornton Baltic conducted a financial and tax due diligence for the Kyyrix OÜ, which has almost 30 years of experience in providing professional cleaning services in Tartu.

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.