By Thapelo Molefe
The Western Cape High Court has ruled that the power to change South Africa’s Value Added Tax (VAT) rate lies with Parliament and not the Minister of Finance, declaring a key section of the VAT Act unconstitutional.
The judgment found that Section 7(4) of the Value-Added Tax Act improperly gave the finance minister the authority to alter the VAT rate through a budget announcement without parliamentary approval.
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The court ruled that this amounted to an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive, stating that decisions on taxation must remain with Parliament as the country’s lawmaking body.
The court, however, suspended the declaration of invalidity for 24 months to give Parliament time to amend the law.
The case was brought by the Democratic Alliance (DA), which argued that the Constitution requires tax decisions to
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