Trade unions have made renewed calls for the scrapping of the Employment Tax Incentive four years after its launch. Labour said it was impossible to measure the effect of the programme on job creation due to a myriad factors including tax confidentiality laws that prevented the South African Revenue Service (SARS) from disclosing employers’ details. The scheme, which has paid qualifying employers R6.3bn in claims between 2014 and 2016 for hiring young people earning below R6,000 per month, was rejected by labour because of fears it would lead to job losses among older workers. Cosatu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said the programme had failed to cover designated vulnerable sectors and special economic zones as intended because there had been no such inclusion to date. He also said subsidies from the incentive were benefiting labour brokers. "What Treasury’s own stats have shown is that … they do not know if any of the jobs are new or already existing jobs and that about 11% of the subsidies...
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