Each year I get particularly annoyed about the falsehood that we receive a “tax relief” – as if Minister Gordhan managed to eke out some extra money for cash-strapped taxpayers. So let’s put it in perspective.

Based on last year’s personal tax revenue of R308bn, if all taxpayers received an inflation-adjusted increase of 7% this year, then tax revenue would increase by R21bn (assuming a direct translation to a 7% tax revenue boost). The R9.25bn “tax relief” is simply SARS creaming a bit less off the extra revenue delivered by inflation. The relief comes in the form of an adjustment to the tax brackets so that inflation-adjusted salary increases do not inadvertently move people into a higher tax bracket.

The bulk of this relief went to people earning R20 000 or less per month with people earning less than R10 000 receiving the biggest tax relief as a percentage of income. If you earn more than this then your actual tax bill will not be less after your 7% salary increase.

Less than 3% pay 30% of taxes

Around 70% of taxpayers have incomes below R250 000 and pay 36% of our personal taxes while 2.4% or 154 000 people earn more than R1 million and account for 30.1% of our personal taxes. Considering that this segment also accounts for the highest spend on VAT, capital gains tax, dividend tax and estate duty the state is doing a pretty good job of “taxing the rich”.

The problem is we don’t have enough rich people – or there are some rich people paying no tax.