This study is part of a multi-country project on ‘Making Tax Reforms Work for Women:
Mobilizing Taxes for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment’. The main objective
of the project is to investigate both explicit and implicit forms of gender bias (see Stotsky
1997a, 1997b) in tax systems in countries of varying levels of development (South
Africa, India, Argentina, Mexico, United Kingdom, Morocco, Ghana and Uganda).
Explicit bias arises due to specific provisions in the tax law that treat women and men
differently. These are typically found in direct taxes. Implicit bias occurs when provisions
of the tax law have a differential impact on women and men due to gendered social or
economic behaviour, even though the tax law contains no explicit bias. This form of bias
is typically found in indirect taxes (i.e. taxes levied on goods and services).
The project focuses on the gendered impact of two main types of taxes: personal income
taxes (which are direct taxes) and indirect taxes (in particular VAT, excises and the fuel
levy). The findings from the personal income tax analysis for South Africa are available
in the country paper by Budlender and Valodia (2007). This paper covers the indirect tax
incidence analysis for South Africa.
The overall findings from the South African case study suggest that the tax reforms of the
past two decades have gone a long way in eliminating both explicit and implicit forms of
bias in the South African tax system. This is particularly the case for the personal income
tax system, while the indirect tax incidence analysis suggests that there may still be some
small room to further eliminate the burden of indirect taxes on poor ‘female’ households.
This paper is organised as follows. In the next section, some background to indirect tax
incidence studies is provided, as well as an outline of the tax structure in South Africa.
Section 3 describes the data and the methodology used, including an explanation of how
we identify the ‘gendered’ incidence of indirect taxes. The results of the incidence
analysis are presented in Section 4, while Section 5 provides some discussion on further .