{"id":462380,"date":"2021-01-20T15:04:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=462380"},"modified":"2021-01-20T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:05:07","slug":"south-africa-could-raise-r160-billion-through-wealth-tax-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/462380\/south-africa-could-raise-r160-billion-through-wealth-tax-study\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa could raise R160 billion through wealth tax: study"},"content":{"rendered":"

An annual wealth tax on the net worth of South Africa\u2019s richest people could raise as much as R160 billion\u00a0($10.7 billion) and would narrow inequality in a nation where the most affluent 1% of the population own 55% of personal wealth, a study showed.<\/p>\n

The study, carried out by groups including the\u00a0World Inequality Lab<\/a><\/strong> of which Thomas Piketty is co-director, assessed personal wealth in South Africa and proposed a range of taxes on net wealth of above R3.82 million or the top 1% of the population.<\/p>\n

South Africa is one of the world\u2019s most unequal nations, a legacy of the apartheid system of racial discrimination that disadvantaged the Black majority and ended in 1994.<\/p>\n

The concentration of wealth is more extreme than in France, the US, the UK, Russia, China or India, and has not decreased since 1993, according to the study published Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Under the moderate tax scenario, about 350,000 individuals would be subject to the tax, with the level ranging from 3% to 7% depending on affluence. The top rate would apply to people with a net worth of above R146.89 million.<\/p>\n

Raising R160 billion\u00a0 in tax would be equivalent to 3.5% of gross domestic product, the study said<\/p>\n

Record Contraction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA progressive wealth tax concentrated on those most capable to pay would be a significant policy tool to finance debt reduction,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

It would spare the \u201cmost vulnerable households, thus placing South Africa in a better position for an economic rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s economy is estimated by the government to have contracted by the most in nine decades because of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

The study was authored by Amory Gethin of the World Inequality Lab, which is linked to the Paris School of Economics, together with Aroop Chatterjee of Johannesburg\u2019s University of The Witwatersrand\u2019s\u00a0Southern Centre for Inequality Studies\u00a0and Leo Czajka of the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Tax hikes and loans for a Covid-19 vaccine \u2013 South Africa has to bite the bullet: Treasury<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An annual wealth tax on the net worth of South Africa\u2019s richest people could raise as much as R160 billion\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":387381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-462380","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\/462380","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462386,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462380\/revisions\/462386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}