{"id":146905,"date":"2016-12-09T12:05:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T10:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=146905"},"modified":"2016-12-09T12:05:27","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T10:05:27","slug":"why-e-tolls-third-birthday-is-more-important-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/146905\/why-e-tolls-third-birthday-is-more-important-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Why e-tolls&#8217; third birthday is more important than you think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week marked three years since the controversial e-tolling project came into operation in Gauteng, a date that is likely to put the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) under even greater financial pressure.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s because according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/as-you-read-this-your-e-toll-debt-might-be-prescribing\/\" target=\"_blank\">Moneyweb<\/a>, under terms of the Credit Act, creditors are unable to demand payment if they have not contacted you in three years.<\/p>\n<p>So if you have not made a payment for e-tolls, have not formally acknowledged the debt or have not been informed by the credit provider about payment over the past three years, it is considered prescribed debt.<\/p>\n<p>Prescribed debt can be used as a defence in court.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/138259\/this-is-how-many-people-owe-money-for-e-tolls\/\" target=\"_blank\">This is how many people owe money for e-tolls<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Moneyweb reported that motorists owe Sanral more than R6.2 billion in unpaid e-tolls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Conservatively speaking, the civil claim of unpaid tolls does expire after three years unless prescription is halted. It is important to note that prescription is a defence that the debtor must raise and a court is not allowed to mero moto (out of own motion) take note of prescription,&#8221; Sanral said.<\/p>\n<p>The roads agency stressed however that non-payment of toll is both a criminal and civil offence in terms of the Sanral Act &#8211; which only prescribe after 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>Sanral said it has already issued more than 6,000 summonses to non-paying motorists &#8211; representing R575 million of outstanding toll fees.<\/p>\n<p>Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) chairman Wayne Duvenhage told Moneyweb that only one in five users pay for e-tolls, with 2.9 million motorists in debt.<\/p>\n<p>Transport Minister, Dipuo Peters recently sent a written reply to Parliament noting that of the 2.5 million registered vehicles on the GFIP network in a month, just under half (1.4 million) were registered e-tag account holders, while 1.3 million users were paying their e-toll bills.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrently \u2026 there are just over 2.9-million accounts with a balance owing. However, 1.2-million owe less than R500 each as at the middle of August,\u201d Peters said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/145705\/this-one-graph-shows-the-spectacular-failure-of-e-tolls\/\" target=\"_blank\">This one graph shows the spectacular failure of e-tolls<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week marked three years since the controversial e-tolling project came into operation in Gauteng, a date that the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) is more likely to be cursing, instead of celebrating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":74920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-146905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146905"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146987,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146905\/revisions\/146987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}