Agree with you Jasimo. People are feeling the crunch.

I like the post by Stommerik and agree totally. Keep on increasing tax and see what happens to your nation -- poverty!!!

It is such a logical thing.
The MORE money you take from your citizens the LESS they can afford to spend. Thus your economy shrinks and your unemployment rate increases.

Simple example: If I went to a restaurant twice a week for dinner, and now due to the increase in the tax I will only go once every 2 weeks. Who is affected? Not me. The poor waiters and chefs and every one else doing business with the restaurant. If it closes down due to less people being able to eat there, who suffers? Not me. The waiters will be without a job.

The higher income people will just cut down on luxuries such as wining and dining, clothing, tourism etc. but they will be fine. The lower income people working in these industries, that are depending on the higher income people to spend money there, WILL suffer. And yes punting is a luxury.

Then they push up dividend tax which will have an effect on the investors of this country as well as the foreigners that are investing money in SA. If they start investing in other avenues outside of the JSE, who will suffer? Yes you've guessed it! The citizens of SA.

Then your hear idiotic remarks like Zuma is pushing the "black" agenda, we support him! To this I laugh my ass of and pity those who actually believe it. Colour does not matter people! We are all in the same boat. We will all suffer together.

Time for a reality check indeed...

Such rubbish Ben, the commies in the goverment have started moving towards the saviour complex as the writing is on the wall for the ANC come 2019, gordhan has pushed the deficit up, while increasing tax,bloated public unservice, increasing social spending and overseeing some of the worst growth in Africa, actually when he was replaced the first time, things started looking better than they had in years from a macro perspective.
Yes maybe he is brave standing up to the looting but he certainly does not have SA's best interest at heart he is as useless as the other commie MP's Davis and Patel, actually the commie troika has bought this nations economy to its knee's, that the SACP has never even tried to stand in an election for fear of been trounced yet, it has such power over our economy is insane.. the best thing for South Africa will be molefe taking over the treasury as this will be the end of the ANC as we know it, the final nail...
fuck the commies, fuck the ANC and Nkosi sikele iafrica

Aye, to be sure, my good man Doubleslappedass !

The latest statistics released by BankservAfrica indicates that salaries are not keeping up with inflation.

It is now official that the portion available to consumers post deductions have been dropping for 8 months in a row.

In real terms people earned 2.6% less last year than before....

Markus Heystek summed the budget up quite well:

I do feel, however, that this budget represents a dramatic mind shift by government. We are, I feel, headed towards a far more socialist and confiscatory regime. The sharp increase in the tax of the so-called super rich and increases in dividend and trust taxation, is just the start thereof.

It's a case of "if we can't make the poor rich, then let's make the rich poor".

Back to punting land....

The bulk of personal income tax is paid by a very small group of taxpayers. Less than 12% pay (based on 2016 numbers) about 62% of all personal income tax. More than half of those taxpayers find themselves in the financial services industry.

Guess more punters are likely to start pinching the pennies...

It's time the middle class, the largest group of actual tax payers, started toyitoying. That's the only way to get this corrupt excuse for a government to start working for us.

So S&P downgraded our foreign debt.

Probably a good thing - as long as it results in the ANC getting rid of JZ. Those (in the ANC) still thinking that you can do this kind of shit without consequences, will now start to learn otherwise.

What is the road forward? We get rid of JZ and some of his most corrupt appointees. We do that, we may claw our way back to growth. But make no mistake, serious damage has been done, from which we will not entirely recover.

If we decide to hang on to JZ, it will be a slippery slope the Zim way. We will strart spending money like mad to finance so-called radical economic transformation & nuclear deal. Confidence will completely evaporate and economic activity slows intially and then starts falling. That means huge reductions in tax revenues, while interest costs rise sharply due to credit downgrade leaving less and less money for other spending. They then hike taxes further to finance expenditure, causing GDP to decline even faster.

Within a year or two, they are simply unable to borrow money. Now they turn to the Reserve Bank to print money. Thats where inflation starts running away. Hallo hyper inflation.

Then nobody trust the currency anymore and you cannot borrow on international markets. By this time all the social grants have stopped either due to no money available, or inflation has eaten it away to the extent that it has almost no value. Same for government employees & parastatals - either not paid or paid in money thats almost worthless.

Only a few in the private sector is still surviving..
If we are lucky, the IMF lends us money at exceptionally harsh conditions and forces us to do economic reforms. If we do that, we slowly start rebuilding, but probably having lost 30+ years of economic progress with per capita incomes falling back to mid 80 levels or worse.

Indeed an easy choice to do the right thing, but even with a whole continent to the north as an example of what not to do, we may try again and expect different outcomes.

Afterall, you get the government you deserve....

On 2017-02-27 17:38:50 jasimo said:


Back to punting land....

The bulk of personal income tax is paid by a very small group of taxpayers. Less than 12% pay (based on 2016 numbers) about 62% of all personal income tax. More than half of those taxpayers find themselves in the financial services industry.

Guess more punters are likely to start pinching the pennies..

It arrived earlier than expected .... weekly punting will most probably turn into monthly punting ... after a couple of months ... no punting !!!

Winter has arrived. 2017 has slapped me with the following:

-no annual increase,
-no discretionary bonus at the end of the financial year,
-company downsizing and some dear colleagues/friends being retrenched.

A downgrade from a higher medical aid option (not as a result of the above reasons btw) and declining the tax-on-bonus scheme sees me netting almost 4k more in comparison to 2016. Without this I fear that my financial situation may have been much more critical.

These troubled times we are facing has forced me to take a closer look at my spending:

-the usual 3 to 4 times a month punting is down to 1 or 2 times at most,
-I had to retrench my sugarbaby (sad face),
-no Easter getaway this year.

With all this in mind, the resilient will prevail and I too shall be amongst them.

And so will Mrs Palm and her five daughters be more productive in the near future ... lol ... fok !!!

Predict that more punters will now join the ESA SSS ... lol !!!