A critical analysis of the common law remedy of piercing the corporate veil and the actio pauliana as distinct from statutory remedies provided for by the Companies acts 61 of 1973 and 71 of 2008 in the recovery of tax by the South African Revenue Service.

Master of Laws in Business Law. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2017.This paper aims to critically analyse common-law remedy of piercing the corporate veil and the actio pauliana as distinct from statutory remedies provided for by the Companies Acts 61 of 1973 and 71 of 2008 in the recovery of tax by the South African Revenue Service (“SARS”). This will be achieved through a comparison of the common law remedies of piercing the corporate veil and the actio pauliana with the statutory remedies which allow for piercing the corporate veil namely section 20 (9) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008, section 424 of the Companies Act 61 of 1973 in relation to a company being wound up as insolvent, section 64 of the Close Corporation Act 69 of 1984 and the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011 in relation to tax debts. With the aim of establishing that piercing the corporate veil at common law and statutory piercing of the corporate veil although closely related have evolved into two distinct remedies. This dissertation will also explore the differences between the actio pauliana and a statutory piercing of the corporate veil, with the aim of establishing whether these common law remedies are still relevant in the collection of tax by SARS