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  • 19-January-2023

    English

    Aid at a glance charts

    These ready-made tables and charts provide for snapshot of aid (Official Development Assistance) for all DAC Members as well as recipient countries and territories. Summary reports by regions (Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Oceania) and the world are also available.

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  • 22-December-2022

    English

    Strengthening the tax system to reduce inequalities and increase revenues in South Africa

    The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the already deteriorating fiscal situation in South Africa. The current consolidation strategy, based on spending cuts and reprioritisation of spending items, has reached its limits and is insufficient to stabilise the debt ratio in the medium term and fund unmet public services needs. The tax-benefit system needs to be redesigned to create fiscal space in the years to come to finance growth-enhancing reforms and to reduce inequalities. The challenge is to generate additional revenues without generating inefficiencies or exacerbating inequality. Income taxes represent around half of total tax revenues, but are levied on small tax bases, partly reflecting the unequal distribution of income. Only the value-added tax has a relatively broad basis combined with a moderate tax rate. There is some scope to raise revenues further while reducing existing tax distortions, notably by broadening the base of corporate and personal income taxes, as well as consumption taxes. Taxes with a less harmful impact on growth, such as property taxes, are limited by the inefficient municipal rates system. There remains scope to further increase environmentally-related taxes.

  • 22-December-2022

    English

    Measuring the impact of structural reforms and investment policies: A DSGE model for South Africa

    This paper aims at quantifying the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of product market reforms and additional public investment using a DSGE model. The model reflects specific features of the South African economy. Tradable and non-tradable product markets are modelled separately, and a segmented labour market is designed to reproduce the labour market duality in South Africa between skilled and unskilled workers. The role of public investment on total factor productivity and its financing modality are taken into allowing the quantification of the net benefits of reforms. Our results show that enhancing competition in the non-tradable sector has a short run recessionary impact while deregulating the tradable sector is expansionary. Overall, the latter has a bigger impact on GDP. From a distributional perspective, a product market reform in both sectors benefits all income deciles. Finally, additional public infrastructure investment, either financed by raising VAT or capital income tax, increases GDP in the short-term less than product market reform in the tradable sector but is more expansionary in the long run, so a combination of both reforms would boost living standards.

  • 22-December-2022

    English

    Boosting productivity to improve living standards in South Africa

    Productivity growth has been falling for a decade, hindering improvements in living standards. Low productivity reflects, firstly, poor infrastructure in telecommunications and transport. Secondly, the regulatory environment is not always business-friendly and often raises obstacles to firm entry, exit and expansion. Combined with weak competition in important sectors, this has led to lower private investment levels, particularly, business R&D. Finally, the educational and health care systems have been unable to supply adequately skilled workers across the country. To improve productivity, public investment needs to become more effective, notably by strengthening the selection process for large infrastructure projects. A more pro-competitive business environment would let productive firms grow and foster innovation. Widening and reducing inequalities in access to education and health care would reduce skill shortages.

  • 14-November-2022

    English

    Revenue Statistics Africa: Key findings for South Africa

    The tax-to-GDP ratio in South Africa decreased by 1.0 percentage points from 26.2% in 2019 to 25.2% in 2020. In comparison, the average* for the 31 African countries within the publication 2022 has decreased by 0.3 percentage points over the same period, and was 16.0% in 2020.

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  • 9-November-2022

    English

    Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes: South Africa 2022 (Second Round, Combined Review) - Peer Review Report on the Exchange of Information on Request

    This publication contains the 2022 Second Round Combined Peer Review on the Exchange of Information on Request for South Africa.

  • 22-September-2022

    English

    Assessing tax relief from targeted investment tax incentives through corporate effective tax rates - Methodology and initial findings for seven Sub-Saharan African countries

    Corporate tax incentives reduce investment costs for businesses, which may affect investment and location decisions. They apply through different designs and interact with countries’ standard tax systems, often making it difficult for tax policy makers and researchers to compare their generosity and assess their impacts across countries. This paper develops a methodology to calculate forward-looking corporate effective tax rates (ETRs) summarising tax relief from investment tax incentives into comparable indicators. It presents ETR indicators for seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Empirical results show that tax incentives substantially lower corporate taxation across these countries. On average, tax incentives reduce ETRs by 30% in the food and automotive industries compared to the standard tax treatment. ETRs often differ among taxpayers in a same sector and country - by up to 55%. The most generous tax treatment is typically offered within Special Economic Zones, where tax incentives can reduce ETRs to near zero.

  • 25-August-2022

    English

    South Africa: improve productivity and the efficiency of public spending to bolster living standards, says OECD

    South Africa needs to step up its reform efforts to avoid its economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic losing steam, according to a new OECD report. Persistent weaknesses in productivity growth and the negative impact of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine on purchasing power through the rise in food and energy prices continue to weigh on economic activity.

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  • 9-June-2022

    English

    Transfer Pricing Country Profiles

    These country profiles focus on countries' domestic legislation regarding key transfer pricing principles, including the arm's length principle, transfer pricing methods, comparability analysis, intangible property, intra-group services, cost contribution agreements, transfer pricing documentation, administrative approaches to avoiding and resolving disputes, safe harbours and other implementation measures.

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  • 25-April-2022

    English

    Assessing Tax Compliance and Illicit Financial Flows in South Africa

    Illicit financial flows (IFFs) such as tax evasion are a major policy challenge for developing and emerging economies, in particular as the COVID-19 pandemic has drained domestic resources. This report presents results from a joint project between the OECD and the National Treasury of South Africa, which assesses tax compliance and IFFs in South Africa. The report provides an overview of macroeconomic, tax and fiscal developments in South Africa since the global financial crisis. It discusses the concepts of IFFs, how they relate to the South African context and provides an overview of South Africa’s participation in multilateral initiatives to combat tax evasion. It also provides a quantitative analysis of tax compliance and IFFs over time amid a variety of tax transparency initiatives implemented in South Africa. Finally, the report examines the effectiveness of tax transparency initiatives such as voluntary disclosure programmes, and looks into income and wealth characteristics of applicants to these programmes.
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