DA to table Budget amendment to fund youth wage subsidy in 2012
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will table an amendment to the Budget in the Standing Committee of Finance to include money to fund the youth wage subsidy from 1 April this year.
The Money Bills Amendment Act allows Parliament's Finance and Appropriations committees to amend the national budget or any other money bill. We will propose in committee that the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) tax loss to fund the first year's subsidy (which should not exceed R1,6bn) should come from the R5,7bn contingency reserve budgeted for this year.
National Treasury completed the design of the subsidy in a publication released a year ago. That same document reads, on page 7: "... the proposed youth employment subsidy is to be implemented from 1 April 2012. It will run through the PAYE system operated by the South African Revenue Service (SARS)." In the document, Treasury estimates that the youth wage subsidy could help to create jobs for 423 000 young people.
Furthermore, the 2011 Budget Review stated: "... to support job creation, a youth employment subsidy in the form of a tax credit costing R5 billion over three years will be introduced".
We note with despair the Finance Minister's apparent admission yesterday that the subsidy will not be implemented on 1 April. Instead he looks to Nedlac to provide "greater urgency in resolving this matter". Our concern is that the Minister may have been misled, because we have been reliably informed that Cosatu is flatly refusing to even discuss the subsidy at Nedlac.
This wage subsidy has been designed and costed, and should be implemented on 1 April, regardless of the narrow ideological opposition of the ANC's alliance partners. Therefore, the DA's intention is to reintroduce funding for the subsidy, as a reduction in PAYE, to the 2011/12 Budget. Doing so will turn the 2012 Budget into one that creates jobs for some of the 3,2 million unemployed young people in South Africa today.
Statement issued by Tim Harris MP, DA Shadow Minister of Finance, February 23 2012
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