LOCAL TAXATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

"We are most of us profoundly uninterested in municipal affairs." Maud.
T his paper questions the rationale of the South African system of local taxation. It is argued that our system has too narrow a tax base-fixed property-to supply the needs of the modern city; that property taxation is iniquitous in its effects upon taxpayers; and that today it is being applied to finance categories of expenditure for which a tax on property was never intended. Some new thinking is required to devise a system that would supply a closer link between financial requirements and ability to pay.