Rants and Sense
Allergy to privatisation increases tax burden
The vast majority of the tax burden still falls on middle-income earners
However tempting it might be to label this week's budget as a Robin Hood plan to take from the rich and give to the poor, it actually places a greater burden on everyone who earns more than R75,750 a year. By emphasising the new 45% marginal tax rate for those who earn more than R1.5-million a year, the finance minister has disguised the fact that the vast majority of the tax burden still falls on middle-income earners. Someone who earns a distinctly middle-class R35,000 a month, for example, will pay R8,000 a year more in tax this year than last. And it didn't have to be that way. Much of the additional tax burden could have been alleviated, in the short term at least, by the sale of state assets. The government's allergy to privatisation costs you money in two ways. This year, it came in the form of an increased tax burden, and there is the perpetual prospect of bailouts of serial underperformers like SAA. Although no one in the National Treasury will say it, there would probably ...
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