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Sin taxes — feeling good has never hit your pocket this badly

Sin taxes — feeling good has never hit your pocket this badly
Lisakanya Venna
By Lisakanya Venna
12 Mar 2025
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As usual, consumers of alcohol and tobacco products get the inevitable annual tax increases for their sins.

Effective immediately, the selected excise duties on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products will increase from 4.75 % to 6.75%:


  • Malt beer: 16 cents increase on 340ml can;

  • Unfortified wine: 29 cents more per 750ml bottle;

  • Fortified wine: 48 cents more per 750ml bottle;

  • Sparkling wine: 90 cents more per 750ml bottle;

  • Ciders and alcoholic fruit beverages: 16 cents more per 340ml can;

  • Spirits: R5.97 more per 750ml bottle;

  • Cigarettes: R1.04 more per packet of 20;

  • Heated tobacco product sticks: 77 cents more per packet of 20;

  • Cigarette tobacco: R1.16 more per 50g;

  • Pipe tobacco: 50 cents more per 25g;

  • Cigars: R8.49 per 23g; and

  • Nicotine and non-nicotine solutions for electronic delivery system: 14c per ml.


‘Crooks are let off scot-free’


Yusuf Abramjee, founder of Tax Justice SA (TJSA), spoke to Daily Maverick a day before the speech and said: “Honest, hard-working South Africans are sick and tired of being penalised while crooks are let off scot-free to live in luxury. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana must realise that hiking excise duties on alcohol and tobacco will only strengthen the hands of criminals who are robbing the nation blind.”

Abramjee noted that illicit cigarettes alone deprive the fiscus of R27-billion in tax revenue every year – nearly as much as a one-percentage-point increase in VAT. The illicit alcohol trade robbed the country of another R11-billion annually. DM

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