PAY AS YOU EARN

Tra ic fines may not be enough of a deterrent to wealthier South Africans. Here’s one solution that could change that

MAGINE, if you will, a businessman. Let’s call him Mr X. When we meet him, he’s rushing to the airport on a Friday afternoon. Mr X is a highly paid executive at a wellknown corporate company. He makes more in a year, before bonuses, than your average South African family will see in an entire lifetime.

On this particular Friday, Mr X is driving his luxury German SUV with his entire family aboard and enough luggage for a week-long holiday. As one of the top 1% earners in SA, he has a holiday home on the coast that he and his family frequent a few times a year between international holidays and, of course, shopping trips.

On his way to the airport, he encounters a red light. Mr X guns it through the junction, knowing full well that a camera has been set up to capture just such a transgression. The ne is a paltry R750, a mere drop when compared with his monthly income or the R20 000 he paid for domestic business-class plane tickets. Rather than risk his family missing the ight, he places other road users in danger. On the nal approach to OR Tambo, he also exceeds the speed limit, but it’s just by 20 km/h and the resultant ne won’t be too high. In all likelihood, he will get his executive assistant to write a letter to the local traf c department to have it reduced.

Now, on that same day, we have a student, Ms Y, trying to make it to her after-university waitering job. She leaves her last lecture in a 1980s econobox that was a hand-me-down

Ifrom her dad. She’s studying law and has a student loan to pay her fees. She waits tables to make ends meet and contributes to the running of her family home.

Even though Ms Y is late and faces the real risk of losing her shift, she can’t afford to run that very same red light because the R750 would set her back nancially. So she stops, and the idea of a red light ne has achieved the desired effect.

Fines, as I understand them, are in place to act as a deterrent to a particular action. Want to speed? Sure, go ahead, but it may cost you. Too lazy to walk from an open parking bay further down the road and feel like parking on a yellow line? No worries, as long as you pay up later. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the cost of a ne that is supposed to prohibit certain behaviours in some, may not have that effect on others. And there seems to be one simple reason for that: income.

If you earn R50 000 a month, a R750 ne is not a big deal. Sure, paying it is an annoyance, but that amount will not cause you to miss any meals; heck, that’s probably what you spend on golf balls in a month. But, consider a student who earns R2 500 a month at her part-time gig. If she crosses a red light, the nancial repercussions are high. As I see it, there is a very simple solution: why don’t we set penalties as a percentage of an individual’s earnings?

For example, red-light nes that amount to 20% of your salary will suddenly cost Mr X several thousands of rands, while Ms Y will incur a penalty of R500. In both cases, the value of the transgression will make the perpetrator think twice before outing the law.

This is a system that’s been increasingly used in European countries and, last year, it saw a wealthy Finnish business man having to fork out a whopping €54 000 (R815 000) after he was caught doing 105 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. Bet that made him think twice about doing it again.

Before anyone starts to complain about discrimination, well-paid individuals are taxed at a higher rate already, so why shouldn’t the same apply to issuance of nes? You never read the headline, “1983 hatchback owner caught doing 223 km/h.” It’s always a sportscar, luxury saloon or SUV of some sort, pointing to an owner who is, invariably, well off.

I rmly believe that, if we are faced with higher nes, the only fair way to implement the nancial penalties without forcing a sector of the population into nancial ruin is to introduce nes on a pay-as-youearn system. Faced with losing a substantial percentage of your salary is a much bigger deterrent than some notional amount that may or may not put a signi cant dent in your balance sheet at the end of the month.