You cannot avoid death or taxes, so the saying goes.
And over the years, the SA Revenue Service (Sars) has become more efficient and, possibly, ruthless, in extracting even more blood out of the South African taxpayer stone.
For what is, in reality, a developing country, our individual tax rates are comparable to, or higher than, those in some industrialised nations.
That is painful, especially when one adds in the indirect taxes like VAT, excise levies on booze and smokes, property transfers and the fuel levy.
But the double pain for ordinary citizens battling to survive is the knowledge that so much of the R1.855 trillion Sars collected last year gets wasted or looted.
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That R1.855 trillion figure is up 6.6% on the previous year, which is one of the reasons that the five top people in Sars between them took home a total of R33 million in salaries and bonuses in the past year, according to the latest remuneration report for the agency.
Those are not anorexic salaries, especially in a country with unemployment of 30% and above overall and one of the highest Gini coefficients (a measure of the gulf between haves and have-nots ) in the world.
The argument in support of such governmental largesse – Sars is a parastatal after all – is that salaries need to be competitive to attract the best people.
And, whatever you may feel for Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter and his crew sticking their long fingers into your wallet, they certainly have done a commendable job in improving the efficiency of the Sars “corporation”, so perhaps they deserve a reward from the shareholder.
However, one can’t help but wonder if, in our current state of being a developing country, these experts could consider what they do a national service, where the rewards should be more than mere money.
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