E-tolls, whole tax system needs revision

THE suggestion that all motorists should pay for the e-tolls needs a more comprehensive reply.

I would concur that e-tolls are an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer, but increasing the fuel levy would just be adding another tax burden on the poor, even if indirectly.

What we need is a revision of the whole tax system. Indirect taxation, which falls heavily on the poor, should be abolished.

VAT, school fees (another form of indirect tax) and the like, which penalise the poor and favour the wealthy, should be abolished. A single progressive tax should be the basis of all taxation for all citizens.

The income of individuals should, beyond a specified level, be taxed at the rate of 100%. Major manufacturing industries only pay taxes on their profits while individuals pay tax on their income.

In other words, by fiddling around with company tax, the bosses themselves pay little or no tax. Corporate tax should thus at least be doubled.

Industry should be levied a research tax to sponsor research into environmentally acceptable technologies such as wind power, desalination, solar energy, geothermal energy and tidal energy. In addition, firms despoiling the environment (high carbon emissions that are a risk to natural water and the habitat) should face punitive levels of taxation.

Excessive usage of water by businesses, golfing estates and industry from natural and underground sources should be taxed to preserve this scarce commodity.

In addition in an open letter to public protector Thuli Madonsela it is claimed by Shaheed Mohammed, of the Workers International Vanguard Party, that Anglo American, Amplats, Implats, Lonmin and other major mining companies deliberately mislabelled their mineral exports, thereby evading the payment of tax. According to Sam Ashman, Ben Fine and Susan Newman, at Amnesty International, in a paper entitled, "The nature, scale and impact of capital flight from South Africa" in the Journal of Southern African Studies, this practice of the mining companies has been carrying on for the past 50 years.

Mohammed also cites Newman's presentation on systematised capital flight in South Africa (at the third IIPPE International Workshop in Ankara) where she records massive under-invoicing by mining companies in South Africa of mineral exports and over-invoicing by these same companies of equipment imports. The net effect is massive capital flight.

The scale of the "theft" is in the order of hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of rands.

Apparently SARS has had several periods of amnesty but the mining companies have failed to come forward.

The apartheid debt that continues to hang as such a heavy burden over the country is an illegitimate debt. It is an odious debt that must immediately be cancelled. Repayments already made must be returned to the people of South Africa and reparations for the damage caused by apartheid must be made.

In addition, we should demand that companies involved in the super-exploitation of South Africa's workers during the apartheid era should make reparations.

The cost of this exploitation continues to exist in terms of widespread human misery, injustice and inequality.

If we attend to the above, would we not be able to do away with e-tolls? Would we then not be able to pay all workers in South Africa a minimum wage of R12500 a month?

Hamilton Petersen, Uitenhage