State bleeds us dry of our hard-earned cash

I HEARD that some municipalities in Gauteng intend imposing a “recycling” levy in addition to the usual refuse-removal charges.

The SABC, meanwhile, not to be left too far behind, is planning to catch you by your handbrakes for imagining that you prefer watching flicks on Netflix, even if it is too stupid to realise that you don’t even own a smart TV.

Licensing offices, at some point in history, introduced a temporary administration surcharge to pay for the “upgrading” of their technology. This, like once-wet cement has hardened into a solid concrete fee that cannot be yanked out of the mouths of the vampires that lurk inside all computer systems.

Of course, keeping a 24-hour vigilance and awaiting their regular upgrade every time the dollar rises, the oil-price drips unnaturally upwards and the rand plunges below ground level, are the silent sentinels of petrol bowsers. Amazing ratio and proportion theory not taught at any school or college is applied such that every time the fuel price is lowered in one month, it rises threefold the next.

Road tolls take their toll on suppressed, downtrodden motorists. Return trips through the same toll require digging deeper into near torn pockets, or searching for the second debit card.

VAT, once termed GST, began at 6%. It won’t be long before it reaches a nice round figure of 20%. Makes it so much easier for the consumer to do the maths. We are all working hard like peasants. All paying massive levies, surcharges, taxes, tolls, to keep not the country intact but, in actuality, all those G-men in business!

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