Our taxpayers are saddled with a hefty burden

In a recent exchange with the South African Revenue Service, an acquaintance claimed expenses for several dependants including 15 million on the welfare rolls, a struggling horde of single mothers, millions of children receiving support, plus millions of Zimbabweans and other nationalities living here illegally and with no obvious means of support.

Somehow, this claim was rejected but perhaps the point was made. As the late Milton Friedman said, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone must always pay and it's usually the taxpayer.

Obviously, the broader the tax base the better will government be able to meet the demands of the people and execute its functions in providing defence, education, health, security, safety and protection, decent roads and public transport.

Our fiscal demographics resemble an inverted triangle with a narrow base supporting a large, unwieldy pyramid. This becomes clear when one considers that there are some five million taxpayers in this country supporting a total population of well over 50 million.

It can be argued that as individual taxpayers provide, say, 35% of the nation's revenues with a further 45% coming from VAT and companies, that the low proportion of taxpayers to population can be misleading.

Conversely, those five million taxpayers are by definition the group who keep the corporate sector afloat and who also pay a hefty portion of VAT receipts. And the more prosperous among the five million also relieve the state of the burden of health costs, education for their children and, in many cases security in their homes.

SARS recently announced that there had been a 13.8% increase in the number of tax returns filed to a record of 4010980 from 3523707 in the 2010 "tax season", as the spokesman put it.

However, according to its statistics, it appears that SARS has more than another million customers on its roll. Thus, out of a total of 50 million-plus, say, another five million migrants, less than 10% are carrying the can for the other 90%.

Perhaps this overstates the problem a little, given that the 5% who do pay tax have dependants they care for, a burden that, in the large, they happily assume. Although about one million of these taxpayers work, one way or another, for the state so they are paid by the remaining four million of us.

On an admittedly small sample of Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, and with statistics not easy to locate, it does appear that taxpayers should make up some 50% of population to sustain a developed economy.

Canada has some 14 million taxpayers out of a population of about 34 million while Australia is supported by almost 12 million out of a population of 23 million, above the 50% threshold.

In the US out of a population of 310 million more than 140 million file tax returns, though not all pay tax.

Similarly, the UK with 62 million has some 25 million taxpayers.

We need to draw vast new numbers into our tax net. And the only way to achieve that is to help them to get jobs.