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R12 billion stealth tax increase for working families

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The following speech by Geordin Hill-Lewis MP – DA Shadow Minister of Finance, was delivered in today’s Parliamentary Debate on the Rates and Monetary Amounts and Amendment of Revenue Laws Bill:

Chair,

From the outset of the medium-term budget process, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has focused on whether the proposals by the government help to advance fairness in our society.

To govern is to choose. No government can have everything, or satisfy every want.

That is why the government is ethically obliged to make choices which are fair to the country as a whole.

This means choosing to prioritise the basic services on which the poor depend and choosing to emphasize investment overconsumption.

And it means protecting the incomes of working families, over the ideology of out-of-touch policymakers.

The Bills before us today contain a stealthy R12 billion effective tax increase for working families. This is done by failing to adjust tax brackets for inflation.

This R12 billion in additional revenue comes straight from the pockets of every hard-working South African.

Is it fair? No, it is not fair. And it is not ethically defensible.

The government has prioritised bailouts for zombie state-owned entities and has prioritised the salaries of millionaire managers in the civil service, over the working families who are already struggling to get through the month.

These good, hard-working people have faced electricity increases, petrol tax increases, VAT increases, public transport increases, and school fee increases. Their jobs are less and less certain, and their wages have been growing slower than inflation.

These are the people who are paying for this tax increase.

These are the people paying more of their hard-earned wages every month to bailout SAA and Eskom, and to keep millionaire managers in the sheltered comfort to which they have become too accustomed.

Is it fair? No, it is not fair. And it is not ethically defensible.

Last week the DA showed that the party that claims to govern for the poor, was cutting R50 billion in services to the poor.

This week, the DA is showing that the party that claims to govern for the working class, is making working families pay R12 billion more in taxes.

That is the truth of this budget.

The truth is, the ANC is not the party of the poor, or of the working class.

It is the party that governs for the new elite of millionaire managers in the civil service, and multi-millionaire deployed cadres in the zombie SOEs.

And in this budget process, we are showing in technicolour that only the Democratic Alliance is committed to using the levers of government to create a fairer society, where the interests of the poor and of working families are protected and advanced.

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