Sars and SABC: MultiChoice’s bold move stirs taxation debate

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) could be roped in to collect ring-fenced tax from SABC viewers, if a proposal by satellite television provider MultiChoice is accepted by government.

According to the department of communications’ draft White Paper on audio and audio-visual media services and online content safety, dated 26 July, this proposed household levy fee funding model was being considered in the SABC Bill, which was approved by the Cabinet in November last year for submission to parliament for processing. This is the so-called Nordic model.

READ: The taxman cometh? SABC could use Sars to collect TV licence fees

But chief economist at Efficient Group Dawie Roodt said it was going to be a difficult task to get people to start paying for their TV licences and that the approach was incorrect.

“This is just another tax,” he said. “I am not so sure this new proposal will fly. People in South Africa are very tax averse and the toll roads is a very good example.

“The right way to do this would be to do it the way that M-Net does it or Netflix. If you want to watch them, you pay a fee.”

Roodt said in the case of the SABC, if politicians wanted SA to have a public broadcaster, then they would have to provide that free for the consumer.

“That means the taxpayer will need to fund that if necessary, but the best approach is to privatise the SABC. There are many TV stations that are totally free.

“It does not mean that if you do not pay for TV that you won’t have access to free stations.

“The SABC should be privatised. But if the politicians reckon we need a public broadcaster, then it must be funded by the state.”

While the SABC has not publicly announced when it would start collecting licence fees from households, it is understood less than a fifth of viewers were paying the annual R265 fee.

The broadcaster reported that 81.7% of TV licence holders did not pay their annual fees for the 2021- 22 financial year – contributing only R815 million of the total R4.45 billion TV licence bill.

Welcome Mvemnyama from Soweto said the SABC needed to stop the TV licence model and consider other revenue streams, as well as acquire its share from pay per view channels.

“Trying to get Sars to do its bidding won’t work,” he said.

Smangele Dlamini from Benoni said it was not a good idea to force people to pay TV licences and even worse getting Sars to collect.

Dlamini said the latest initiative was disturbing.

“Already people have a burden of paying the DStv subscription, which is extremely expensive. The difference is that you subscribe to it.

“The saddest part is that the SABC is utilised specifically by the majority of people who are middle-class in this country and can’t afford to subscribe to other networks,” she said.

“Everything here in South Africa, whatever decisions they make, they do not think about the poor.

“It’s them who are affected and under a lot of pressure with everything so expensive.

“It also so sickening and unfair for them to keep comparing SA with those Western countries when they want to make decisions that affect South Africa.”

Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Mondli Gungubele revealed recently that there were a total of 9.2 million accounts with R44.2 billion in outstanding balances.

“These balances comprise unpaid invoices and penalties levied for nonpayment over several years.

“At least 5.6 million accounts have been handed over for external debt collection,” said Gungubele, who was responding to Economic Freedom Fighters’ MP Sinawo Tambo’s parliamentary questions.

Sars has not responded not responded to a request for comment.

Additional reporting by Cornelia Le Roux.