EDITORIAL: Tax take yields small comfort
The big item that rode to the rescue was the February budget increase in dividend tax
The Monday media briefing at which the South African Revenue Service (SARS) released revenue collections for 2016-17 put on display much self-congratulation, back-patting and ululating on the part of the SARS folk. There was much from commissioner Tom Moyane about SARS’s efficiency, relentlessness and resilience, and its extraordinary achievement in meeting its R1.144-trillion target, despite very tough economic times. Arguably, this was more because the Treasury got it almost spot-on when it revised the original revenue target down by R30bn than because Moyane and those around him are so extraordinary. In such tough economic times, it is worth being just a little measured, even humble, about having to extract the equivalent of 26% of SA’s GDP from an ailing economy in which many consumers and businesses are taking strain. Clearly, SARS’s 14,500 employees did work immensely hard to reach the reduced target — and even exceed it, albeit by just R300,000 — by midnight on March 31 and t...
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