{"id":90239,"date":"2025-02-27T10:17:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T10:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=90239"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:37:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:37:42","slug":"vat-chart-a-global-comparison-and-south-africas-place-in-the-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2025\/02\/27\/vat-chart-a-global-comparison-and-south-africas-place-in-the-mix\/","title":{"rendered":"Plotting VAT: A global comparison and South Africa’s place in the mix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Despite its flaws, value-added tax (VAT) remains one of the least distortionary ways to raise revenue. For South Africa, the alternatives \u2013 cutting spending on education, healthcare or infrastructure, or taking on more debt \u2013 come with a high risk of being worse, economic historian Johan Fourie cautioned in a recent Our Long Walk newsletter<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VAT has been adopted in more than 170 countries and generates almost 30% of global tax revenue \u2013 especially in countries with large informal economies, Fourie explains in his post, VAT up, doc?<\/a> He plots VAT rates in a number of countries against GDP per capita to show that South Africa\u2019s current rate of 15% aligns closely with global norms for economies at a similar income level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were inspired to create an interactive version<\/a> of the chart Fourie includes in his post. Using VAT rates for 120 countries based on a PwC tax summaries list<\/a>, our chart shows that European countries have the highest rates, with Hungary topping the global list at 27%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Scandinavian countries \u2013 Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland \u2013 all charge 25% or more. Only two non-European countries have a VAT rate higher than 20%: Uruguay (22%); and Argentina (21%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VAT was introduced in South Africa at 10% in September 1991 and has been increased twice since then: to 14% in April 1993 and to 15% in April 2018. A proposed increase to 17% failed to get approval from all the parties in the cabinet last week and was the reason for the Budget speech being rescheduled to 12 March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udc40 View the interactive version of the chart<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plotting VAT rates against GDP per capita in 120 countries shows that South Africa\u2019s current rate of 15% aligns closely with global norms for economies at similar income levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1387],"tags":[187,360,1371,1372,1369,1370,40,177,1368,1367],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-90239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-the-outlier","tag-budget","tag-data-visualisation","tag-government-revenue","tag-interactive-dataviz","tag-johan-fourie","tag-pwc","tag-south-africa","tag-tax","tag-value-added-tax","tag-vat"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90239"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90248,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90239\/revisions\/90248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90239"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=90239"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=90239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}