Commissioner, South Afrikan Revenue Service v Brummeria Renaissance (PTY) LTD and others : does the judgement benefit an understanding of the concept amount

CITATION: Jansen Van Rensburg, E. 2008. Commissioner, South African Revenue Service v Brummeria Renaissance (Pty) Ltd and others : does the judgement benefit an understanding of the concept "amount"?. Stellenbosch Law Review = Stellenbosch Regstydskrif 19(1):34-50.The original publication is available at https://journals.co.za/content/journal/ju_slrINSTRODUCTION: It has been said that the decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Commissioner, South African Revenue Service v Brummeria Renaissance (Pty) Ltd is the most important tax case decided in the past 30 years. The case has far-reaching consequences for the many retirement village developers who financed the construction of units in retirement villages by obtaining interest-free loans from retirees in return for granting occupation rights in respect of these units. Questions have also been raised regarding the possible application of the decision to other interest-free loans and even other areas of taxation law. The case deals with the question whether a borrower of money under an interest-free loan can be taxed on the “benefit” of not having to pay interest. This paper argues that this question should be answered in the negative, since the borrower does not acquire property and no amount accordingly accrues to or is received by her, as required by the definition of “gross income”.Publishers versio