Who is BSP Seminars®?

A famous tax specialist, the late Dr Aubrey Silke—of the ‘Silke’ textbook fame—founded bsp Seminars® more than thirty-six years ago under the name ‘Business Seminars Promotions’.
It was certainly the first firm offering tax seminars to the South African public and might also have been the very first commercial seminar firm in the land. Not very much later, Dr Silke was joined by Costa Divaris and Michael Stein, who today continue the firm as a partnership between The Electronic Publishing Corp cc (sole member: Costa Divaris) and Michael Stein. They both have spent their entire careers in tax, as public speakers, authors, editors, publishers and advisers, including short spells in academe.
In the old days a bsp seminar was something of a heroic affair, for both presenters and their victims, with hour-long, formal presentations. Today we have moved almost entirely to an informal atmosphere, with the presenters genuinely discussing a selection of practical questions, usually of huge financial significance, with open input from participants. As we like to say, you never have to leave without addressing your own, particular concerns.
One thing has nevertheless remained constant—the quality of the bsp notes, which have always stood head and shoulders above the competition. Today the difference is so marked that we have taken to referring to our notes as ‘reference-manuals’ and to claiming that they represent ‘the textbooks of the future’. Only bsp offers notes of such outstanding quality and value that we can offer them for sale from the bsp Seminars® Store for a price representing a substantial fraction of the attendance fee. Continuing professional education has become a concern in most professions, and our notes enable you to ‘bulk up’ your seminar attendance times by the hours required to read the notes, which contain a wealth of material impossible to cover in seminar presentations.
Apart from the notes proper prepared for a specific seminar, we offer our unique ‘Law Lookups’, which present the latest law in the most user-friendly manner conceivable, ‘bsp Acts’, comprising the full text of particular statutes, and, coming soon, major works on particular subjects from the bsp Bookclub. All of this publishing activity is both displayed and controlled in a remarkable document called ‘The bsp Seminars Store’, which demonstrates the lengths to which we go to ensure the quality of our reference-manuals. Of especial significance are the ‘Law Lookups’, which address the problem that very few firms today maintain adequate technical libraries. With the appropriate ‘Law Lookup’, you can yourself consult the actual provisions of the law referenced in our notes and at the same time garner vital information about their effective dates, their earlier wordings and what was said about their purpose and meaning by the fiscal authorities when they were amended.
We have only a single goal—to develop and transfer tax know-how with the greatest possible currency and accuracy in the midst of a never-ending torrent of legislative and quasi-legislative material from the fiscal authorities. And we share much of that know-how freely, by way of a free monthly newsletter, Tax Shock, Horror, delivered by e-mail, a cd containing a massive database of public-access documents on tax, Tax Shock, Horror Database, distributed free on special occasions, and our free bspStylebook.

Our ambition is to make you sufficiently expert in the tax law to triumph over its challenges, whether in your career, your profession or your business.