Where your tax money goes — how the state spends every R100

21 May 2025

Ever wonder where your taxes are going? Budget 3.0 lays it bare: For every R100 spent, about R13 goes to basic education, R12 to social protection and more than R16 vanishes into debt service costs. Meanwhile, just cents trickle towards arts, job creation and innovation.

Some of these expenditure categories seem a bit vague. Let's break them down:

Social security funds refers specifically to financial reserves and schemes like the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), and the Compensation Fund, which provide temporary relief of cover for specific social risks.

Community development typically includes spending on housing, local amenities, and urban or rural development projects aimed at improving living conditions, especially in under-resourced areas.

Economic regulation and infrastructure covers the funding of regulatory bodies as well as infrastructure investments in roads, railways, ports, and other public utilities.

Public administration and fiscal affairs involves the National Treasury, tax collection, budgeting, auditing, and general bureaucratic oversight.

Payments for financial assets generally means expenditure like bailouts, equity injections into state-owned entities, or purchasing shares and other financial instruments. DM

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