MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Unjust burden of double tax is crippling Joburg households as city wallows in state of decay

A week ago, I received a notification from TRSS, a private security company, that monthly instalments would be increasing.

TRSS provides security services to my neighbourhood and several houses, including mine, in the complex where I reside. As I contemplated on this increase, realising I’d have to shoulder it as I cannot afford to go without private security even in my relatively safe neighbourhood, I started to think about just how much I spend on private security and other services in general, and how much I am taxed.

As a well-earning South African, I am taxed more than 40% on my primary income and 25% across other income streams as a freelancer.

I believe in the importance of taxes, in great part because I know what taxes are doing for poor, working-class South Africans. I grew up in a poor household and I know that without taxes providing relief for us, we might have never gotten through the crushing weight of poverty. Taxes funded the food aid that we received from the social development department when my late mother was unemployed and could not afford to feed my younger brother and me.

Taxes also funded the public schools I attended, where I received quality education and services, including mental health support. Without this, I might have never been a PhD candidate in a prestigious German university today. Taxes also helped my mother receive decent healthcare in a public hospital when she was battling cancer.

Today, taxes make it possible for my grandmother to receive an old-age pension, which has limited my black tax responsibilities. Having been a beneficiary of taxes throughout my life, I am an advocate of paying taxes. I have always settled a debt with the SA Revenue Service because I believe unwaveringly in the importance of the institution.

But over the past few months, I have been thinking seriously about the burden of double-tax on residents of Johannesburg. Our city is in such a state of decay that four days ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the establishment of a special task team to help revive the inner city and Johannesburg in general.

This was after he travelled around the city and saw, first-hand, the state of dilapidation that has turned what was once referred to as “a world class African city” into something akin to a tenement. While I understand the basis for this intervention, I am concerned about how it perpetuates the institutional fundamentalism that characterises Ramaphosa’s approach to leadership.

I have written about this in my column, contending that this approach leads to the duplication of responsibilities and weakens departments/entities, hollowing out the state while centralising too much power in the presidency. This said, residents of Johannesburg are paying an unjust double tax that is crippling our households. While we pay hefty personal income tax and VAT like all other South Africans, we also pay an additional tax for services that should be funded by our taxes.

I pay taxes that contribute to the allocation for the Gauteng department of community safety and the police, but I also pay a private security company to keep me safe. I pay for public healthcare and subsidise private healthcare but also pay for medical aid. I pay taxes that contribute to the allocation for provincial and municipal roads and transport departments but also contribute special levies for private contractors to fill the potholes in my neighbourhood.

I must keep spare change in my car to tip the unemployed young men who direct traffic all around Johannesburg because our traffic lights rarely work.

The taxes I pay that contribute to higher education funding do not benefit my sole dependant, who is in a private institution in Midrand on account of, in part, limited spaces owing to the slow pace of building universities in post-apartheid SA. It is a double tax that Joburgers know too well. And it is killing us.