{"id":44756,"date":"2013-08-26T12:39:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T10:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=44756"},"modified":"2013-08-27T09:03:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T07:03:24","slug":"leaving-sa-more-costly-than-leaving-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/44756\/leaving-sa-more-costly-than-leaving-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving SA more costly than leaving earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

It cost South African tech entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth<\/a> more money to leave his home country than it did to leave earth, according to a report by Forbes.<\/p>\n

When Shuttleworth took his maiden trip into space in 2001, he did so at a personal cost of $20 million – just under R205 million at today’s exchange rate.<\/p>\n

However, when Shuttleworth decided to leave South Africa – taking his fortune with him – the SA government slapped the entrepreneur with a hefty R250 million bill in levies, worth $30 million at the time, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n

In June 2013, Shuttleworth launched a failed bid against the South African Reserve Bank (SARB<\/a>) to have the country\u2019s exchange control system declared unconstitutional, overturning the levy of R250 million he had to pay to get his assets out of the country in 2009.<\/p>\n

In July, the High Court in Pretoria dismissed Shuttleworth\u2019s application.<\/p>\n

At the time of his emigration, Shuttleworth had assets worth over R4.27 billion in South Africa, but transferred the assets out of the country in 2008 and 2009, each time paying a 10% levy.<\/p>\n

Government abandoned the levy a year after Shuttleworth moved the remainder of his assets out of the country.<\/p>\n

The irony of exchange controls<\/h3>\n

According to Forbes contributor, Richard Grant<\/a>, the Shuttleworth case serves as a case in point of exchange control regulations encouraging people to expatriate their wealth rather than disincentivising it, as intended.<\/p>\n

“The existence of exchange controls (in any country) is a special, and perhaps extreme, manifestation of a general failure to recognize that such regulations are more likely to aggravate, if not cause, the kinds of problems for which they are believed to be the cure,” Grant said.<\/p>\n

While the exchange controls have been loosened considerably, Grant said, they are still in force, and place hurdles in front of businesses that deal with large sums of money.<\/p>\n

“Perhaps the greatest irony of that case, Shuttleworth v South African Reserve Bank and Others, was that the laws relevant to the contest were themselves the cause of the very actions they were intended to prevent,” Grant said.<\/p>\n

“In other words, had exchange controls not existed, Mark Shuttleworth might still be living in South Africa.”<\/p>\n

Shuttleworth currently lives on the Isle of Man and holds dual South African and United Kingdom citizenship.<\/p>\n

Source: Forbes<\/a><\/h3>\n

More on Mark Shuttleworth<\/h3>\n

Shuttleworth exchange control: a legal view<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Shuttleworth\u2019s court case can devastate South Africa: SARB<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Shuttleworth takes SA government to court<\/a><\/h3>\n

Mark Shuttleworth punts Ubuntu Phone OS at CES 2013<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It cost South African tech entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth more money to leave his home country than it did to leave earth, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":35461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,4936,3619],"class_list":["post-44756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-mark-shuttleworth","tag-sarb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44756","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=44756"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44814,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44756\/revisions\/44814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}