Dont delude yourself.. the tax base grew 'cos Gordon Pravin and SARS forced EVERYONE earning a salary to register, no matter how low the pay was. The amount of people on the books have changed, not the amount of people paying.
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SA freakin TAX
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Dont delude yourself.. the tax base grew 'cos Gordon Pravin and SARS forced EVERYONE earning a salary to register, no matter how low the pay was. The amount of people on the books have changed, not the amount of people paying.
R13...
Honorary Master
My figures were up to 2010 before everyone had to register. In around 2008 there were 5.3m registered tax payers way before this new directive.
I actually thought about what I posted as did my source.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
Nonsense.
Firstly those tax decreases were intended to compensate for high inflation.
Secondly those decreases were accompanied by the closing of a variety of loopholes and reduction of allowable deductions.
Thirdly the decreases came on the back of a massive drive to compliance both at the individual level and at the company level.
The worry is, that the increases in collections as a result of 1 & 2 have peaked, but projected goverment welfare spending is just getting started.
Common sense tells us that either SARS is going to have to allow bracket creep to get more collections, or they're going to have to find new sources of income.
I'd predict the usual increases in sin taxes, fuel taxes, bank transaction taxes, and possibly an increase in VAT.
I wouldn't bank on bracket creep decreases either.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
UK is a welfare state.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
or just leave the country.
VioAdmin
Expert Member
lol Welcome to the "Democratic Government".
The majority of people don't want taxes yet none of us, and I mean none of us can and will do anything about it. Once the taxes roll in, we will all line up to pay...I am telling you, Governance=Allowance. It's just a system for those in power to get richer, there is nothing more to it than that, nothing about educating or helping the society, that is all lie.
Look at Telkom, how many decades have they controlled SA? Making billions of rands even though 90% of us don't agree with their actions but we can't do jack **** about it!
Question is, what to do from here? Option = Pay the taxes or????
The majority of people don't want taxes yet none of us, and I mean none of us can and will do anything about it. Once the taxes roll in, we will all line up to pay...I am telling you, Governance=Allowance. It's just a system for those in power to get richer, there is nothing more to it than that, nothing about educating or helping the society, that is all lie.
Look at Telkom, how many decades have they controlled SA? Making billions of rands even though 90% of us don't agree with their actions but we can't do jack **** about it!
Question is, what to do from here? Option = Pay the taxes or????
If somebody earning a big salary wants to sit on a pile of cash and just make more cash, then god for them. I'm pretty sure there are very few people who earn big and are truely, truely frugal. And there must be very few ways to circumvent paying VAT -- I mean I know you can buy through companies, or something but those rules could be adjusted.
Hooray!. most of the top countries are welfare states
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state
Im not against this.
Redistribution of wealth is painful though, even more so when its miss-manged
Ive got more hope in future generations to be smart enough to handle a welfare state successfully.Albereth
Honorary Master
Depends on what they buy - bread, no. Big ass TV, yes.
SoulTax
Executive Member
Hooray!. most of the top countries are welfare states
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state
Im not against this.
Redistribution of wealth is painful though, even more so when its miss-manged
Ye I am not completely against a welfare state, although a welfare state can only prosper if the general population strives to not be on welfare. There is a factor present in this country that none of those countries in the successful welfare states wiki has. All of those countries were a base, non victimized society before the welfare started. Even America which is the closest to us in terms of recent history, does not even compare. You see in America the opressed did not make up the majority share of the population. The majority share of the population were already well educated, middle class citizens. Brought up with a sense of hard work etc...
SA has a potential problem to contend with. Here we have a large majority of the population that are poor and previously opressed. They will inevitably have a mentality that there are certain things "owed" to them by the government and by the middle to upper class. They will see welfare as something owed to them in recompense for past transgressions.
This mentality will cause the percentage of people in lower class wanting to progress to upper class, to be reduced more than other welfare states, where they can breed a sense of work ethic into everyone.
Now I am not saying that the lower class does not posses a strong work ethic. I am saying that the sense of entitlement may be strong enough to dampen the future aspirations that the work ethic would have created. Thus keeping the lower class low, and providing an even stronger reason to not raise above and beyond.
None of the other succesful welfare states have had the history that we have in this country. There is no way to know if a welfare model will truly work here the way it has in other countries. There are a few worrying things to consider. Sense of entitlement being a large one to worry about I think.
I pay Rates and Taxes to my Local Council
I pay Television License Fees
I pay Motor Vehicle License Fees
I pay VAT
I pay Fuel Surcharges & RAF when I buy petrol
I pay Income Tax
I pay a portion of UIF
I pay Toll Fees on highways
I pay Airport Tax
If I buy a house, I pay Transfer duty (sale over R600,000).
Sin tax on Tobacco and Alcohol.
Tax on lottery & gambling winnings
I pay tax on my car allowance
Fortunately my medical aid contributions are still exempt.
I get taxed on my dividends from next years
I pay tax on interest earned.
I pay an Annual fee on my Company License.
I pay a fee to register new companies.
I pay VAT and Customs Duties on anything I import
If I somehow get a large sum of Cash, I have to pay Capital Gains Tax
If my Dad dies, I will have to pay tax on his estate.
When I retire, I will have to pay 18% tax after the first R315,000 Retirement Annuity and 27% after the second R315,000, etc. (same for my provident fund).
It's no wonder I can barely make ends meet at the end of the month!
*** wonders how much tax I would pay if I lived in a shack in Katlehong? ***
Need I remind you, your tax is used to employ police, yet you still have to buy and pay VAT on: insurance / burglar alarms / armed response. Your tax is used to fund hospitals, yet you still have to sign up for a private medical aid. Why are we paying over and over and over for the same thing we should've gotten in the first place?
SoulTax
Executive Member
Yes they did. In early Jan it was increased to 20%, it was on 17% already for the last few years anyway. Their tax rate is higher over there as well. And your National Insurance tax is not taken off of your income tax but off of your salary as a separate, income tax exempt, amount.
The UK model of Welfare is crumbling. All the foreigners allowed in, causing the overpopulation of the country has increased the number of people on welfare. The original model worked for their own citizens, but they let too many people into the country that they have taken responsibility for... Zimbabwe immigrants anyone? They are already figuring out ways to remove the social grants offered to mothers for each baby born etc...
The things you must remember though about the difference in what the hard working people in the UK get compared to us is this:
Free medical at your doctors, free hospital admission and care at state hospitals. If you live in a decent area, these hospitals are good to go into. Bad areas you will get a baragwanath type hospital. But the bad areas are the welfare areas anyway. Middle to upper class areas have good public hospitals.
Free Schooling for your children at state schools. All you need to do is get yourself into the catchment zone of a good school and you are good to go. There are public schools there that rival our most expensive private schools here.
Police that actually pull you over for a broken tail light. Actually pitch up if you call them for a minor misdemenor like a theft of a bicycle, and dont take 4 hours to get there.
These are just 3 things that you get for your money paid. So yes over there you pay more of your salary over to the government. But they reimburse you in other ways. The cost of a good school here can be upwards of 100k a year. Work that out as a percentage of your anual salary here and add it to your "tax". The cost of an above average medical aid scheme here will cost you around about what the NI costs per month over there. And you still have to pay a deposit to a hospital if you come in on an emergency from a car accident. Then still end up paying a certain percentage of your care. Or dont get your rehabilitation covered or whatever.
I would truly have no problem paying high tax here if we got our money's worth. Police that are not a bunch of slow, late, fat, lazy, degenerate pieces of rubbish that actually care when someone is attacked in their homes. This is a major one for me. There are a whole host of reasons why people in this country complain about high taxation. The main reasons are: what do we get out of it? What quality of life improvements are we getting out of paying our tax?
There are countries in Europe that are taxed at astronomic rates, but the majority of citizens are happy with it because of what they get out of paying tax. Belgium and Finland are 2 examples.
I doubt there is a person on these forums that would complain about high tax rates, if they actually could see their money's worth working for them and their community. In this country sadly that is not the case, and that is why people go up in arms at high taxation. That and the corruption that takes a nice big portion of it.
Probably because of the giant financial inequalities created by Apartheid
This generation is paying for the current and previous generations mistakes. Lucky us. But its pretty simple, the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor the more unstable and and more crime you get. South Africa has one of the worlds largest gaps between rich and poor.. kinda explains the crime doesnt it?
Millions of South Africans shafted and left in poverty are going to have to be dealt with. Thats how it is. We are technically footing the bill for those that enjoyed, supported and exploited apartheid.
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Probably because of the giant financial inequalities created by Apartheid
But its pretty simple, the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor the more unstable and and more crime you get. South Africa has one of the worlds largest gaps between rich and poor.. kinda explains the crime doesnt it?
Millions of South Africans shafted and left in poverty are going to have to be dealt with. Thats how it is. We are technically footing the bill for those that enjoyed, supported and exploited apartheid.
Granted, although it still doesn't explain the health, local municipal and schooling disasters.
Poverty driven crimes I can fully understand. High level corruption can't be blamed on anything else.
Hence our current dire predicament
Poverty doesn't drive these organized wealthy criminal gangs terrorizing people.
Albereth
Honorary Master
And they have variable VAT rates. The high end is for 'luxury' goods.
Kinda does, we created an education system that gave us the Zuma`s of today. We now have to wait until our age and younger come into power in around 15 - 20 years. Wait for education to make a play. Change takes time as Julius Ceaser said. Right now we have a bunch of morons running the country because we created a moronic education system for them.
Yup, the current mullets suck. Though there was a culture of corruption before the idiots now in charge took control. Cant wait till the education system creates enough people who complain about the corruption and do something about it... but I think we are still a decade or so away from that.
Biggest problem with a welfare state... its incredibly hard to manage.. which is why mostly only very educated countries have decent systems and even they still get it wrong, but over time, it does pay off.
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BBSA
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w1z4rd, you are a bit naive if you think the current bunch receive a good education.
Thats nice. Im sure you think you are right.
The generation today have access to better education than the previous generation under the Bantu Education Act
Change takes time. Of course education has vast miles to go still, and needs massive improvement.
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