The National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service have published the 14th annual edition of the Tax Statistics.
Revenue collections in the 2020/21 fiscal year were severely impacted on by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown restrictions and an already struggling economy that contracted by 7% in 2020. Total tax revenue collections for 2020/21 declined by 7.8% to R1 249.7 billion from the R1 355.8 billion collected in the previous year.
The key points in the 2021 edition are:
The tax-to-GDP ratio moderated from 23.8% in 2019/20 to 22.5% in 2020/21. This was mainly due to annual reductions in the revenue collected from personal income tax, value-added tax, and domestic specific excise duties.
Personal income tax
- 2 091 559 (40.1%) of assessed taxpayers were registered in Gauteng;
- 687 261 of assessed taxpayers lived in the Johannesburg Metro and were taxed on an average taxable income of R481 209;
- 1 365 098 (26.2%) of assessed taxpayers were aged between 35 to 44 years;
- 2 792 845 (53.6%) of assessed taxpayers were male; 2 420 951 (46.4%) were female;
- Assessed taxpayers had aggregate taxable income of R1.8 trillion and a tax liability of R407.2 billion. Their average tax rate was 22.4% compared to 22.3% in the previous tax year; and.
- Income from salaries, wages and other remuneration as well as pension, overtime and annuities accounted for 91.6% of total taxable income.
Corporate income tax
Corporate income tax reveal that out of the 812 306 companies assessed as at September 2021 for tax year 2019, 24.0% had positive taxable income, whilst 48.3% had taxable income equal to zero and the remaining 27.7% reported an assessed loss.
The 2021 Tax Statistics documents are available on the SARS and National Treasury website at www.sars.gov.za and www.treasury.gov.za
