{"id":435855,"date":"2020-09-25T09:30:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T07:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=435855"},"modified":"2020-09-25T09:41:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T07:41:26","slug":"taxpayers-should-foot-the-bill-for-a-r1500-basic-income-grant-in-south-africa-unions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/435855\/taxpayers-should-foot-the-bill-for-a-r1500-basic-income-grant-in-south-africa-unions\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxpayers should foot the bill for a R1,500 basic income grant in South Africa: unions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) has reiterated calls for the introduction of a basic income grant as an long-term extension of the Covid-19 financial support currently being offered to South Africans.<\/p>\n<p>In a presentation on Wednesday (24 September), Saftu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi said that the social grants currently being offered to citizens was &#8216;tokenistically low&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Threats to end these increases in October must be withdrawn. The Temporary Employee \/ Employer Relief Scheme (TERS) of R350 a month must be transformed into a Basic Income Grant of R1,500 at least, so as to boost effective demand for all South Africans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A rise in progressive taxation rates would allow a claw-back of all the funding,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GHcvyoROdpk\" width=\"640\" height=\"430\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In July, Social Development minister Lindiwe Zulu said that South Africa will introduce a universal basic income grant as part of a range of packages to help the country\u2019s unemployed.<\/p>\n<p>Zulu did not provide details of how the grant would be funded or its size, but told a virtual press briefing it would be paid \u2018post-October\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>This announcement follows a parliamentary\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/414685\/government-is-looking-at-a-new-basic-income-grant-for-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">briefing<\/a> <\/strong>in which the Department of Social Development noted that the demand for income support will go beyond the six month period covered by the R350 Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.<\/p>\n<p>The pandemic prompted president Cyril Ramaphosa to announce a temporary top-up of those grants by up to R300, including a R350 unemployment grant, in late March.<\/p>\n<p>The ANC has previously said that it will also look at the feasibility of introducing a basic income grant as part of a series of outcomes decided upon by its National Executive Committee (NEC).<\/p>\n<p>According to a document seen by\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/411375\/anc-considers-additional-tax-to-fund-a-r500-monthly-income-grant\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bloomberg<\/a><\/strong>, the ANC proposes paying\u00a0<strong>a R500 monthly grant<\/strong>\u00a0to those aged 19 to 59 who aren\u2019t normally eligible for other aid would cost the state R197.8 billion a year.<\/p>\n<p>Between 50% and 60% of the money could be recouped by levying extra taxes on those with jobs, it said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cost\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Intellidex analyst Peter Attard Montalto said that debate around a basic income grant has been ongoing for around 20 years, and has even been a subject of previous research, which found it could reduce poverty in the country by as much as 75%.<\/p>\n<p>However, the big problem is affordability.<\/p>\n<p>Under the current proposals, a basic income grant would carry the following criteria:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It would be payable to anyone aged 18-59, however, it would start from 18-24 and 50-59.<\/li>\n<li>It would be around R500 per month.<\/li>\n<li>It would not be based on unemployment but would be available to anyone not receiving any other benefit, including UIF support.<\/li>\n<li>It would be administered by SASSA who pays the current grants via a pre-paid card-based system.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Assuming the grant was R500 per month, as proposed by ANC policy makers, the maximum cost would be around R210 billion a year for the full age range, or starting at R77 billion for the narrower set of ages.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/435569\/tax-collection-warning-as-south-africa-economy-likely-to-continue-to-struggle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tax collection warning as South Africa\u2019s economy likely to continue to struggle<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) has reiterated calls for the introduction of a basic income grant as an long-term extension of the Covid-19 financial support currently being offered to South Africans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":390881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-435855","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\/435855","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=435855"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435871,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435855\/revisions\/435871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}