Thursday, March 17, 2011

Toll Roads & Taxation

Taxation is dependent entirely on the will of the governed. The greatest revolutions in history were accomplished when the governed stood up and said to the governors to hell with you and your unwelcome taxes. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and so we can go on and on through history.

After the municipal elections in May this year we are about to be forced without consultation, to pay for taxes on the roads where more than 40% of our Gross National Product is produced viz on every single major highway within Gauteng, and in violation of a Statute still on the books that obliges the authorities only to apply tolls on roads where there are alternative routes. These do not exist, so think what your suburbs are going to look like as all the heavy duty 18 and 26 wheelers leave the highways and start using your suburban streets to avoid these ludicrous taxes, imposed on us without so much as a by your leave? Enough with this.

What legal measures can we the unwilling and overburdened motorists take to say NO in the most effective way that exists to the unhearing and arrogant politicians who think we can simply be forced to accept something we object to in the most strenuous manner. The answer is withdraw your consent by simply refusing to cooperate with this disgraceful imposition. That is by way of the following suggestion.

The best way to achieve this is to avoid totally any cooperation with the authorities and to inconvenience them to the highest extent possible by your refusal to cooperate. The very best way to do that is to refuse to install the electronic toll transponders in your car for which they are offering a discount. Transponders require linkage to a credit card, which guarantees payment or for you to pay upfront, by loading a credit on the transponder, thereby assuring they get money for the toll at the time of use. AVOID THIS. Do not respond to this enticement to discount this onerous tax, as this is how they are trying to buy your cooperation. Say NO to their outrageous discounts by saying NO to their outrageous taxes and then still continue to use the highways, as this is entirely legal. That will force SANRAL to issue and mail accounts and then when you still don’t pay, to issue summonses to all motorists who refuse. Only pay under duress and continue to do this until such time they drop the prices. SANRAL will be forced to send out millions and millions and millions of accounts every month and they don't have either the man power or the budget to do it, most especially if you don’t pay them upfront – which is how they will front load the costs of enforcement. Deprive them of that mechanism from the outset. Bankrupt this morally bankrupt system!!!

This is the best and easiest way to boycott the system. South Africans are too complacent and its time we fight back. We have already paid for these roads long ago with the massive ongoing taxes for licences, the levy imposed on your licence fee of R32 every single year, the fuel levy on every litre of fuel, the VAT on your new car, the VAT on your tyres, the VAT on your workshop bill and so on and so on and so on.


Has anyone thought just how much tax we are already paying?

a. Generally 25% to 35% on your salary
b. 14% on everything you buy (except fresh food and some services) but please exclude your sewage usage as you even pay 14% on the water and sewage charges paid to the municipality every time you take a trip to the john.
c. Carbon tax if you buy a new car (besides the 14% VAT you have to pay for VAT)
d. Tax on the fuel you put in your car to run it.
e. Toll on many of our existing roads

When are we going to get up and do something about it? Now is the time to start saying enough. Why now, because everyone is simply outraged and the critical mass to say enough is there. Join the groundswell and say to hell with you!

Where is all our tax money going to?

It is definitely not being spent on what it should be - our hospitals are in a state of disrepair, our schools in shambles, our roads full of potholes, our water contaminated, sewers not working, people left in the dark because Eskom failed to do their upgrades and their managers then get bonuses for millions of Rand which in turn provoke strikes by the general labour force which end up in 11% salary increases, and all the while the poor are poorer still, municipalities are on the brink of collapse, and so the list goes on.

Heard about the youth day celebration that cost R100 million? Mmm... did you pay for it? Oh yes sir/madam you did! R100 million that could have paid for a couple of things our country needed more instead of little boys and girls who pay no taxes holding silly parties to issue useless statements about imperialists – who are those and where are their empires?

Its high time to tell these rapacious and dippy politicians at the Transport Ministry, the Treasury and the Provincial Government, we say enough of you and your attempts to take anymore of our hard earned money for you to waste on whatever hair brained scheme you can think up next so as to give yourselves even more annual bonuses for their implementation. Yes we see how you work, how you reward yourselves for every hair brained bit of lunacy.

Friends withdraw your cooperation to pay these tolls and when it reaches a huge critical mass, watch those tolls come tumbling down. We saw during the World Cup last year, how the nation came together and flew the flag on their cars with delight. They were there at every stop light, every street corner, every filling station, every highway. Everywhere you looked public spirited patriots flew the flag with pride. Now is the time to do the same by saying you’ll only get our toll money with the biggest possible effort.

And for those of you who can avoid the daily, or weekly trips on the highways, take your car out and go through one single toll gantry, and then off at the immediately following offramp. When thousands and thousand of us are doing that, and the toll fee is a measly R8 and the cost of postage and summonses are R40, watch the system collapse under its own weight. Oh yes, they will tell you, you’ll have to pay for the summons, well they have to be delivered in person. If you refuse to collect registered mail at the Post Office, they cant be delivered so then the delivery process moves to another mode. Next they’ll tell you, you have to pay at the time you pay your car licence, well hello, no one can force you to pay anything unless you’ve had your day in court. Yes it’ll be inconvenient if you really stand up to them, but passive resistance the Ghandi strategy which led to India’s independence and which had its origins in this country can move mountains. It threw the British out of India and it can throw Mr Nazzir Ali off our roads (he’s the SANRAL boss)

Its out consent which will make their outrageous tolls work. Its our refusal to cooperate that will raise the price of implementation so high, they will have to think twice.


Author unknown.


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Responding to disaster

The scenes coming from Japan these last few days are heartbreaking...sometimes I cannot watch the endless renderings from CNN and Sky for more than a few minutes without wanting to just do SOMETHING to help these people. I have donated money to volunteer groups heading over there but it gnaws at me; how does one respond more personally, and to whom, but more importantly where does one get accurate information on what is really happening. My 9 year old believes from the two minutes of CNN he surreptitiously snuck that all Japanese have been killed. Where else does one get updated information other than these carrion sources.