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ECONOMY

An interesting statistic that was released last week is the effect of tax redistribution. Without taxation and cash transfers, 46.5 of our population live in poverty i.e. on less than R443 per month at 2010 prices. After tax and redistribution these levels dropped to 34.2%. Whilst this statistic probably does not enthuse most taxpayers, the result places us way ahead of other countries using the same system of welfare transfers, in that our system is probably twice as effective as that used in Chile and Brazil.

An interesting conundrum was broached by Joffe: We have a tax shortfall and the way one would instinctively want to address that is to collect more tax from the rich; right? She says that we have 93,000 people who earn more than R1 m per year. Squeezing them for more money will hardly render the kind of income that we require meet the deficit. In fact, looking elsewhere, if one looks at tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, this ratio has been creeping up from 24.4% in 2010 to 26.1% this year. Simply put, the only way out of this is for our economy to grow or for the government to spend less.
In the same vein is a report by FinMark to the effect that the number of people in our LSM1

BUSINESS

There is an almost unnoticed battle being fought between Apple Pay and retailers. Apple Pay has produced a very smooth quick and reliable method of payment of accounts. The cost, at 2

PROPERTY

PRACTICE

A former police spin doctor was found guilty of fraud and forging his Matric certificate. He plans to appeal his sentence

CASES AND SUCH

Delictual liability

In a recent case Planet Fitness was sued by a woman who fell when attempting to accept together with another person at the exit barrier. She was tipped when a barrier, designed to provide access to one person at a time came up when her son who had been ahead of her exited before her. The deciding issue was whether the gym had been negligent in not anticipating that the barrier could trip someone. What was interesting was the judge

WEIRD & WONDERFUL

When I was a law student (a few years back) it was explained to me that you could not take your own life as that belonged to the state. I

QUOTABLES

LIGHTEN UP

n Ou tree af in Zimbabwe. Hy gaan sit in die kroeg en gesels oor sy uittrede. Hulle vra wat hy beplan het af hy gaan aftree. Hy se ek gaan more n boek oor Zimbabwe skryf. O, se sy vriende, en wat gaan jy die middag doen?

Twee Kapenaars sit in die kroeg en kyk na die Cape Argus fietstoer. Gamat skud sy kop en vra,