THE government is planning to introduce a raft of new taxes targeting every Zimbabwean whether formally employed, self-employed or not employed in a bid to fund the proposed compulsory health insurance scheme.
NQOBANI NDLOVU STAFF REPORTER
Under the proposals, every Zimbabwean, regardless of age, would be taxed even for mobile phone use.
For example, the more one tops up airtime, the more you contribute to the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI).
Health and Child Care deputy minister Paul Chimedza said the tax proposals, if adopted, would “revolutionalise the way we finance our health care in the country for the betterment of all Zimbabweans”.
NHI will result in the scrapping of the compulsory Aids levy introduced in 1999 to fund Aids mitigation programmes.
NHI is also envisaged to cushion Zimbabweans who cannot afford high medical aid fees charged by medical aid societies.
“Regarding this health insurance fund, everybody will be included regardless of where they are or who they are. The ways we are talking about it will include everybody in the country and what we know is that whenever somebody juices their phone, we will deduct that money,” Chimedza said.
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“When they buy from supermarkets, money collected from the VAT [value added tax] will be taken to the health fund.
“So we are saying every individual will be given a chance to make their contribution according to their abilities so that everyone in the country is covered by this health fund.
“We have looked at different taxing models, for example, people who smoke and drink will definitely end up in a health care institution.
“We are going to propose that we tax that. They can enjoy themselves and we wait for them. We tax a bit from the alcohol and tobacco and put in a kit.
“We are also going to propose that we tax a levy from the tollgates because a lot of resources are going into looking after accident victims on the roads.
“Therefore, the people who use the roads, we can tax a bit. We also looked at different ways.”
Chimedza was responding to a question in Senate on Thursday by Mashonaland West Senator Prisca Mupfumira (Zanu PF) on when the scheme that has been on the pipeline would be launched, according to the Hansard.
“We know that at the moment not everyone is employed, but everyone will go into a supermarket to buy sugar and bread. So their point of payment will be VAT,” Chimedza said.
“If we want everyone to contribute to a NHI Fund, we can probably propose that from the 15%, we increase to 16% and that 1% goes into the kit for the NHI so that it is a sustainable fund where everyone can contribute.
“We have a penetration right now of 109% in the country — everyone has a cellphone.
“If we want to tax money to go into the health insurance fund, when someone tops up their airtime in their cellphone, we consider whether we should take one cent so that those who make more calls contribute more than those who make fewer calls, but it is according to ability.”
He, however, said the proposed taxes were still at “very elementary discussion stages”.
