Hon Deputy Speaker, in the Standing Committee on Finance the EFF recorded its objection to the Taxation Laws Amendment Bill and all the Bills that are tabled here today. We specifically stated that these Bills do not present adequate programmes and interventions to deal with the phenomenal base erosion of profit shifting and transfer pricing.
When we made that objection, Treasury said that section 50 of the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Bill dealt with that. We illustrated the fact that that section did not deal in any way with these phenomena. It also revealed a lack of sophistication on the part of the ANC government and a lack of understanding of the extent to which these phenomena are robbing South Africa of potential wealth and her tax revenue base.
In the committees here in Parliament the Financial Intelligence Centre deals with far deeper details of how money is stolen from South Africa and transferred to other parts of the world. Even the SA Revenue Service admitted that we have a crisis of transfer pricing and tax avoidance by huge multinational corporations that manipulate the trading system. But there is still not proper sophistication and understanding of the solutions in regard to how we are going to deal with this particular question.
The committee made a resolution that the EFF must prepare a presentation on how these phenomena can be combated. We have been given 10 days to deal with that. We can assure Parliament and the people of South Africa that we are going to provide much more solid and cogent solutions to these problems, because those who have been elected to government are failing to do so. They cannot deal with the simple phenomenon of the manipulation of the trading system. That is one issue.
Minister of Finance, it is not possible for only 20% of your revenue to come from corporations such as mines and banks, whilst there are so many companies existing in South Africa. You get only about R200 billion from that for you to deal with so many socioeconomic developmental issues, the wages of public servants and everything else. You can extract far more than that. You just have to understand how the international trade regime can be interrogated and made to pay adequate taxes here in South Africa.
As things stand it looks like you do not have the necessary capacity, but we are here to help you in regard to those issues. [Laughter.] We are going to be able to give guidance and assist you in that regard.
There are things we are going to do. Part of what must be done is this. We made a public clarion call that we should make transfer pricing illegal.
The Deputy President of the ANC, because he is a beneficiary of transfer pricing in Lonmin, went to the NCOP and said that it was not illegal; it was a moral question. He said that it was not illegal for companies to avoid taxes in South Africa, and go and pay almost zero taxes in Bermuda. Other companies go to other parts of the world where there are no taxes. You have a Deputy President who is a direct beneficiary of tax avoidance practices here in this country and no one seems to be doing anything about it!
But we can assure you that before we deal with those issues in a comprehensive and cogent way, we as the EFF need to say that we cannot agree with all these taxation Bills. This is because the ANC has still failed to understand the complexity of the problem at hand, and it is mostly because it has private individuals in its leadership who are benefiting from these horrible instances. Thank you very much. [Applause.]