Taxes are accepted necessity but…
6LU
There are three primary reasons for taxation and these are To fund government operations health, education, security, social services etc. To redistribute wealth ± from the rich to the poor through improved social services.
To mitigate the negative effects of some consumer products by subsidising them.
Simply put, taxation is the price we pay for belonging to a society and in our case the society of (swatini. $s long as government fails to be brutally honest with itself, there is no hope that the country will ever change its self-inflicted cashflow problems. Before deciding on taxing poor emaSwati further, government should identify where the leakages of our meagre resources are. ,t should ask itself why we should continue having a bloated &abinet relative to the population what is the need for the various emabandla
who are not cheap but continue to put a strain on the already cash strapped economy what deliverables and key performance areas are in place for ministers and the various emabandla.
,f government is serious about turning around the fortunes of our country, it needs to ask itself some very uncomfortable questions such as
,f it were your business, would you
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continue funding the numerous vanity proMects much against advice from experts?
,f it were your business, would you
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continue to keep a civil service that is bloated, demotivated and downright inefficient?
,f it were your business, would you
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continue to advise that we keep certain people in key positions well beyond the normal retirement age and expect them to deliver modern day solutions? ,f it were your business, would you
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continue on the traMectory of not embracing the intellectuals that you have spent our meagre resources developing being treated with contempt?
,f it were your business, would you be
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encouraging a situation where there are no minimum entry requirements for important positions such as legislators? $s long as it follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by tip-toeing around the real reasons why we are in this mess, then *od $lmighty knows that government failed even before it started its unenviable task of managing our resources.
Taxes are an accepted necessity worldwide, but when taxpayers get no value for their tax, it is downright criminal. :hat guarantees do the taxpayers have that their taxes will not be continuously squandered on vanity proMects? :hat guarantees do the taxpayers have that their taxes will go towards their basic needs such as the provision of clean water, drugs in hospitals, improved road infrastructure etc? *overnment should not be intimidated into Mustifying the clearly unMustifiable, but it should pursue an agenda of changing its thinking. 3revious governments used the very same reasons the current one has been advancing to the nation that taxpayers’ lives will improve once we all tighten the belts but alas, they continued to spend will-nilly to the detriment of the rest of the nation. :hy do investors shun away from us when similar si]ed countries are attracting huge investments?
This could only mean one thing the owners of capital don’t see us as a trustworthy destination for their money, they see us as a serious risk and unless we tackle this perception, government will continue taxing us to the bone until there is nothing to tax.
+DQJHU