Government to track all South Africans who leave the country for longer than 3 months

[monsta]

Hey Guys,

 

My apologies if this sounds like fear mongering...  but I saw this article:

 

https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/174919/government-plans-to-track-all-south-africans-who-leave-the-country-for-longer-than-3-months-report/ :

 

" This is the first time that emigration control has appeared in Home Affairs policy, according to the report, and is directly attributed to the high number of skilled workers and taxes leaving the country."

 

Is this anything new?

 

[BobSA]

Haven't heard about this before but doesn't worry me. Unless I am missing something?

 

Due to double-taxation agreements and rules the tax implications to most people who sold everything and left should be quite small!

 

In the end that is the only reason they care- loss of professionals who contribute more tax- rather than the brain drain on the country. Sad reality in my opinion!

[monsta]

The article goes on to say

 

" According to data published in the white paper, 520,000 South Africans became expats between 1989 and 2003. Of these, 120,000 had professional qualifications, making up over 7% of all of the country’s professionals. "

 

I always remember the government ignoring those sorts of statistics... they said the only people who left were those white haters  and that blacks would take their jobs..

 

" The white paper also highlighted that, around the world, expats typically have strong relationships with their home countries, and that a substantial part of their income is formed from foreign payments. "

 

Yep, many of us leave and take our pension funds, sell our homes and bring the proceeds, etc..  

 

I was just wondering if this is a change in opinion now that the economy isn't doing so well? When its hard to grow the economy to increase taxes (and opportunities for fraud) then you look at where you are loosing money.

[WayneAndMel]

This may be related to the article a while back where SARS proposed taxing those working overseas temporarily in other lower income tax rate regions like Dubai and earning income there. This would theoretically assist them with tracking who was outside of the country for long enough to potentially be flagged automatically on the system, with notification automatically sent to SARS when they do an assessment on said individual.

 

Implementing such a clean idea it might however be a different ball game in reality as they could never get the odometer reading tracking between SARS and AARTO/it's predecessors/local bodies right for the travel allowance claims on peoples returns.  

 

The other thoughts that may be motivating them may be around identifying those who are outside of the country for too long and then trying to restrict any funds still in SA that said emigrant would potentially remit overseas later on by, for example, embargoing bank accounts.

 

After all, some officials may be aware that in the experiences of other nations that underwent a credit downgrade to junk status, it often eventually led to the affected country imposing tighter foreign exchange restrictions as funds rushed to leave and the local currency tanked (again). This might be a pre-emptive thought when pre-emptive thoughts should have gone to preventing a downgrade long ago,.

 

But then that (ever increasingly likely) possibility is part of the reason many of us are on this forum to begin with.