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Top 10 comments: Sars, Nersa rejects Eskom, Greece

Cape Town - The 2015 tax season has kicked off with Sars being tasked with collecting a mammoth R1.1trn, many commentators were sceptical about where taxes are going.

The Eskom electricity crisis, which usually stirs lively debate, reached a high point after the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) declined an application by Eskom for an additional tariff hike.

The Greek debt crisis escalated this week as the country's banks shut-down to exercise capital controls. Fin24 commentator Yvette Abercrombie said South Africa should look and learn.

Below is the weekly dose of top ten Fin24 user comments - selected for their wit, value-add to the topic at hand and contribution to healthy debate in a country so much in need of constructive dialogue.

Top ten user comments on:

Sars tax target R1.1trn for 2015:

1. John Wewege - Every year Sars brags about achieving its tax targets. Fact is: Its not about that, but all about HOW the tax money is spend and on WHAT!

Pay up or go dark, acting Eskom CEO warns:

2. Edward Brittain - Fixing Eskom is child's play. Simply break up Eskom, privatise the power stations, then the grid. That will for starters get rid of the incompetent thousands at head office and introduce competition. Also shut down Nersa - the market is a much more effective regulator and costs nothing.

SAA can return to profit in 4 years - CEO:

3. Beng Lephafa - If somebody came to me with a proposal and asked me to invest in a business that projects profitability to be achieved in four years time...I would say hell no. Any person in their right mind would definitely turn them down. Anything can happen within that 4 years thus hampering that target (boards changing, CEOs etc), but hey it's a parastatal, the tax payer is coughing.

Govt sells Vodacom stake to fund Eskom:

4. Dirk Short - Help me understand. "The Public Investment Corporation (PIC), is a registered financial services provider, and is wholly owned by the SA government, with the Minister of Finance as shareholder representative". In other words, the government has used government money to buy the R23bn Vodacom share from the Government so that the Government can pay Eskom. In other words, the government has taken money from our piggy bank (it contains pension fund investments) and has given it to Eskom.

Greece to shut banks, stock market as crisis deepens:

5. Yvette Abercrombie - South Africa look and learn. No one is going to bail us out when our economy crashes. We have given the ruling party absolute power and they are leading us down the same path of destruction.

Public funds and sticky fingers:

6. SunshinyDay - What's wrong a cheap car? He is a public servant, using public funds. If government officials want expensive cars, then they must pay for them out their own pockets. There should be a cap of R300 000 at most - they REALLY don't need anything more expensive.

Plan launched for worst case blackout scenario:

7. Nichola Smith - I don't want to alarm anyone, but I am currently marketing a beautiful home for an ex-Senior Engineer to Eskom who said it is so bad there that he and his entire family are emigrating (3 adult children and their families). Basically, he said, there is just no possible hope. They (management) have squandered our money (billions) and run it to ground. It is inevitable but just a matter of when...

5 reasons why Nersa turned Eskom down:

8. Sean Murphy - Well done Nersa. If Eskom wants to earn more money they should generate more power to sell. Allowing them to make more money without generating more power will not give them the incentive to fix their generating capacity. Also, they need to cut off the non-payers. That will remove the shortfall immediately. Us payers are sick of subsidising the slackers while still suffering load shedding.

Without R6bn hunting industry SA game bubble to burst:

9. Defying Dutchman - I'm not a fan of canned hunting, and I think trophy hunting is daft, but those are opinions. Feed lot animals and high density farmed chickens are still much worse off than the hunted animals. Let's not bull***t ourselves here with attempts to argue that hunting is unethical if we turn a blind eye to where the next T-bone comes from.

Also, it is absolutely undeniable that hunting is a huge revenue earner for SA, and we now have more wildlife than any time in the past 50 years because of the combined outcome from hunting and safari tourism.

10. Carina Cunningham Webber - These lions bred for the bullets are kept in very small cages in shocking conditions, with out even a blade of grass. They are over crowed with sometimes up to 10 lions in an area the size of an average lounge. There are hundreds of documented photo's up on social media.

If you speak with officials that do the inspections they will also tell you about the shocking living conditions.

There are +- 8 000 lions in captivity in these facilities in SA and +- 2500 lions living wild in SA. This is an abomination...factory farming lions so some ar$ewipe can sit in a wheelchair and shoot a lion that is drugged and behind a fence. 

Disclaimer: All letters and comments published in MyFin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.

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