The individual taxpayer continues to bare the burden

20 February 2019

Personal Income Tax (PIT) is one of the tax pillars and contributes around 38 per cent of the total tax take. The individual taxpayer continues to be burdened with the larger portion of the tax budget as PIT rates remain unchanged, no CPI (inflationary) adjustment for bracket creep and rebates adjusted by a very small margin. This all results in individual taxpayers not increasing their take home pay, albeit that they are subjected to inflation of around 4%.

The Minister’s proposed tax changes seem to not be populist, even though we face a year of National Elections. But rather the Budget seems to be realistic considering the state of the South African Economy! High net-worth families and individuals will definitely welcome that the Minister did not increase donations tax or estate duty, and that the tax free nature of dispositions between spouses remained unchanged.