Taxes in the name of health not so healthy for personal freedoms
Consumers are worse off because of the government's insatiable appetite to wring revenue from citizens
From 1993 to 2002, purely to raise revenue, a tax was levied on soft drinks and mineral water. On April 1 (and nothing to do with April Fool’s Day), the government decided to reintroduce this tax, calling it a “health promotion levy”. The state coffers now may be slightly healthier as a result, but consumers, particularly low-income individuals, are worse off because of the government's insatiable appetite to tax citizens.
The Treasury claims the "new" tax is not a revenue-raising mechanism but rather a genuine attempt to address SA’s rising rate of obesity. And it seems surprised that it has raised more money than anticipated. But putting aside the fact that the “health promotion levy” only targets sugary drinks and is therefore clearly discriminatory and arbitrary, it has not been ring-fenced, which raises an interesting dilemma. If, as the Treasury claims, it is not a revenue-raising scheme, then another tax should have been reduced or done away with. Instead, what we have ...
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