South African 2010 Budget Speech

The new Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, presented his first Budget speech for the 2010/2011 fiscal year yesterday.

Gordhan, in stark contrast to Trevor Manual, is a serious man who is not given to Manual's somewhat theatrical dialogue. Gordhan's budget speech can be poignantly précised as 'a positively boring budget speech by comparison with what we were warned it might contain'. Although the budget has been broadly welcomed the Congress of SA Trade Unions has lashed out at the Finance Minister calling it 'old wine in new bottles'.

The budget encompassed a bit of savings on personal tax, increased annual exemptions for interest, foreign dividend income and in tax deductable portions for medical aids. Summarised as follows:

• 'if you decide to DRIVE down to the store in your NEW Carbon Emission Vehicle to FILL up your car, purchase a PACKET OF CIGARETTES and / or a BOTTLE OF WINE... you will be affected the most.'
• 'if you are in the SANDF, really old and did not plan for retirement or young and unemployed - don't smoke, drink, drive, gamble, or have avoided paying tax... you will gain the most from the proposed spending to support economic recovery and improve service delivery.'

Instead of posting the usual financial look at the budget we thought we would post some comments made by regular South Africans:

• Long live Minister Gordhan and his team (led by Mr. Kganyago on the operational level)! I was very worried that the Minister will want to milk the TAX PAYERS given all the plans/promises still to be funded. This is a very good budget under very challenging economic circumstances.
• Ojala! In Spanish means 'if only.' If only all the ANC Ministers and Heads of Department were as professional as our Tax Boss!
• Well done and thanks Mr. Gordhan! It was a tough decision, but we are all grateful. I said before to give the guy a chance.
• Instead of cutting tax, how about improving infrastructure. Fix the water supplies, roads, education, hospitals, police, etc. Cutting tax is short-sighted when there isn't enough money to for services. On the positive side, less tax means that people can afford private education, hospitals, etc (i.e. privatisation), which is also good.

Budget 2010 Downloads

• National Budget Speech (PDF, 365kb)
• Budget Highlights (PDF, 475kb)
• People's Guide to the Budget : English (PDF, 2.6mb)
• Tax Pocket Guide 2010 (PDF, 100kb)

A reminder that the end of the tax year is looming and with it the opportunity for taxpayers to top up their retirement annuity contributions to receive the applicable tax deductions.