The World Bank argument is that South Africa’s inequality is already being addressed to a far greater degree than is commonly admitted.
It calculates that government spending on free public services – health and education in particular – can be considered “income” for the poor.
By that reckoning, South Africa’s famous world-leading Gini coefficient is actually a lot lower than critics say
What is VAT?
South Africa introduced value-added tax (VAT) in 1991 at 10% and hiked it to 14% in 1994.
Before then, there had been a general sales tax that tried to achieve more or less the same thing VAT does – to tax all domestic consumption.
Currently, zero-rated items are brown bread, maize meal, samp, mealie rice, dried mealies, dried beans, lentils, tinned pilchards, milk, cultured milk, milk powder, dairy powder blend, rice, vegetables, fruit, vegetable oil, brown wheat meal, eggs and paraffin.” –www.fin24.com
