By Own Correspondent

FINANCE Minister, Mthuli Ncube’s 2022 National Budget tax relief measures have fallen far short of the workers expectations as many are still poised to surrender the most part of their incomes to the taxpayer.

Contrary to earlier Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions submissions that the blueprint must be denominated in US$, the treasury boss instead delivered the budget statement in local currency amid poor tax relief measures, which among others, included the expansion of the tax free threshold from $10 000 to $30 000.

Due to inflationary pressures which have seen the food basket reaching $42 708 for a family of six as at October 2021, the current measures will automatically throw the majority of workers into the tax band as salary inflation related salary adjustments  become unavoidable into the coming year.

“In order to provide relief to taxpayers and also boost aggregate demand for goods and services, I propose to adjust the tax-free threshold from $10 000 to $ 25 000 and also adjust the tax bands to end at $500 000, above which a marginal tax rate of 40% will apply, with effect from 1 January 2022,” said Ncube in the budget statement.

He further proposes to review the tax-free threshold on income accruing in foreign currency from US$ 70 to US$ 100 with effect from 1 January 2022 with other foreign currency tax bands remaining unchanged.

He also proposed to review the local currency tax-free bonus threshold from $25 000 to $ 100 000 and the foreign currency tax-free bonus threshold from US$ 320 to US$ 700, with effect from 1 November 2021.