Wealth taxes are populist and really not the answer

The thing about populist ideas is that they have very little connection to reality.

- Amanda Visser

The same goes with the every so often (or very often) call for a wealth tax as the solution to South Africa's fiscal woes.

The number of rich people continues to shrink because of emigration but also because people are getting "poorer" due to the lack of economic growth and opportunities.

There must be a lot of scrambling going on behind the scenes to put a national budget on the table today that will not anger South Africans or impoverish them even more.

The February budget fell flat because of the announcement of a two-percentage point increase in the value-added tax (VAT) rate to 17%.

Recent reports note that there are now talks of a 0.5% increase.

Every time there is a budget there are calls for a wealth tax to save us. Internationally there have also been calls for a minimum global tax of 2% on untaxed global wealth.

SA already employs several wealth-related taxes, besides personal income tax, corporate income tax and VAT.