CAPE TOWN- Hendri Terblanche‚ who successfully petitioned Parliament to allow men to get more days off to take care of their newborns‚ is now asking Parliament to charge zero tax on water provided by municipalities to households.
He wrote to Parliament’s National Council of Provinces chairperson Thandi Modise on Friday, asking that zero-rating section 11 of the Value Added Tax Act be amended to include water to be charged with a tax at the rate of zero percent.
He said in his petition, “The Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991 infringes on our right to sufficient food and water. To think that for every R1 that you spend on the purchase of water only R0.87 is for the actual water and the remaining R0.13 for the 15% value-added tax. I can drink water‚ but I can’t drink the 15% VAT.”
He said the only negative of this proposal of changing the tax rate on water was a 13c loss for the government per R1 of water, he added, “Municipalities will still be able to claim input Value-Added Tax‚”
The General Household Survey of 2016 showed figures that 14,029,000 out of 16,264,000 households had access to piped municipal water supplies, Terblanche said.
Photo Credit- TimesLIVE/123RF/maridav
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