Withdrawing extra-12% Job Tax a win with a warning – IRR

1 September 2021

Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu has withdrawn her green paper proposal for a social security plan that would amount to an exorbitant extra income tax on workers. The plan was opposed by the IRR on the basis that it was unaffordable to working South Africans, that it would harm existing pension savings, and that it would fuel state capture v2.0 corruption. The plan was also opposed by other NGOs, political parties, and trade unions.

The vindication of ordinary South Africans’ incomes through the Job Tax withdrawal is a battle won during the opening manoeuvres, but a battle won nonetheless. Victories against state encroachment are rare and must be celebrated to nourish active citizenship through this decade-long drought of good policy news in South Africa.

The Job Tax victory is not the first time the state’s larcenous hand has been blocked from digging deeper into South African pockets. The IRR drove resistance to “prescribed assets”, an earlier plan to force private savings into rotting government assets, and the double victory against prescribed assets and the new Job Tax demonstrates what active citizenship means, a vindication of common sense.

Said IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse: “Ramaphosa loves to talk about ‘our people’, but even he could not pretend our people want to be taxed more and more by this corrupt administration. Lindiwe Zulu’s pretensions evaporated in the light of common-sense resistance. That is a victory to remember and build upon.

“The warning is this; we saw the prescribed assets grab come, we fought back, and knocked that down. Then the new Job Tax plan arose. The fight was much quicker, and now it is flattened as well. But the underlying source of such reckless policy proposals, the imploding cadre network, is growing desperate. The price of freedom is vigilance. South Africans will have to keep up their guard.”

Issued by Gabriel Crouse, IRR Head of Campaigns, 1 September 2021